


Shadows of The Sun

by Caliburn0



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 60,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caliburn0/pseuds/Caliburn0
Summary: A Jiraiya who takes his godfather responsibilities seriously teaches a young Naruto the Shadow Clone jutsu. In Naruto's hands this jutsu is a training tool unlike any other. But to a young boy growing up in a village that ignores and fears him, the Shadow Clone is more than a method for gaining power. It is an escape.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a redo of my first fanfic; ‘The Tale of Uzumaki Naruto’ (On FanFiction.net), which didn’t turn out to my satisfaction. The story has changed significantly from its conception, to the point where even the core concept has become unrecognizable. I can’t even call it the same story any more. As such; the name has been changed.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the world of Naruto, or any of its characters and concepts. These belong to Masashi Kishimoto and Viz Media, Shonen Jump and other related parties.

_Naruto_

Pain lanced through Naruto’s mind.

Crying out, the child waved his arms desperately as gravity took its due. It felt like tiny explosions went off inside his head. 

As he hit the ground, he smashed his knee into a tree root, then his back crashed painfully against a sharp rock.

The blond just stayed in place for a while, whimpering and clutching his leg as he waited for the pain to go away. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

Sleep was absolutely forbidden. He knew that, but he’d been so tired, and that tree had been really comfortable. He’d only closed his eyes for a second!

Naruto forced himself to stand with a grunt. Most of the bruises from the fall had already disappeared, but he knew his headache was only just starting.

Limping home, he at least wanted to reach his bed before the day was out. He knew from experience there would be a few hours before he was capable of doing much of anything.

As he hobbled through the streets of The Village Hidden in the Leaf, the only looks he got were cold and merciless. 

Nobody offered to help. 

Not that he’d expect them to. 

Naruto had few friends, and even fewer fans.

Twenty minutes later, he stumbled into his apartment. Obaa-chan wasn’t there unfortunately, so he’d have to manage on his own.

Getting some ice-cream from the freezer, Naruto sighed contentedly as the cold hit his brain. Despite the good food, his mood was ruined. He was supposed to help the Ichiraku’s with cleaning today, but he couldn’t now. He could barely walk.

Why did he have to fall asleep!? He got more than enough rest each night. He even measured it! 10 hours should be more than enough, even for growing boys!

Scowling down at his trembling hands, he tried to ignore the molten iron flowing through his spine by going over everything he’d seen today. 

Some of his clones’ memories had been washed away by the overload, but he still retained the highlights and enough broken pieces to make out something comprehensible.

The Uchiha were restless. That’s what Sasuke’s older brother had told him yesterday. He had confirmed that today: How the police were more aggressive than usual. They were making more and more arrests lately, and the civilians tended to look at them the same way they looked at him.

The blond sighed tiredly. While that was important on a political level, there wasn’t much he could really do about it. He was probably the only person that was less liked than the Uchiha at the moment, not to mention the tiny detail of him being all of seven years old.

He _wanted_ to help though. It didn’t feel right to leave his friend hanging. Sasuke was one of two friends Naruto had his own age. It was more than a little irritating to realize there was nothing he could do to help his clan.

The fact that these problems with the Uchiha were popping up… Naruto really didn’t like it. Sasuke didn’t talk about it much, but Naruto knew it was bothering him too.

Naruto’s body locked up as another cascade of fire raced all the way down to his toes.

Whimpering, Naruto crawled under the covers of his bed, drawing his legs up to his chin as he tried to pass out.

Two hours later, he finally managed to fall asleep.

* * *

Since learning the Shadow Clone technique when he was six years old, Naruto had made five rules for abusing it like it owed him money. These five rules had come about after months of trial and error and far too many migraines.

The first was to not make too many clones, lest he suffer the mental backlash from all those memories returning upon the clones’ dispersion

The second was to not let a single clone last too long. The reasoning being the same as the first rule. His brain could only receive so much information at once without protesting.

The third was to not dispel all the clones at once. It was much more preferable for the memories to settle and his mind to relax before being bombarded with another set of them.

This necessitated a clone dispelling and creation schedule that Naruto had to keep himself to religiously if he didn’t want to be assaulted by horrible headaches all the time. Thanks to this rule, he had been able to double the amount of clones he had been able to use previously - going from 4 clones to 8 overnight. 

Very useful, that.

The fourth rule, and the one he had most problems with, was: ‘Don’t sleep outside the schedule’. All his clones disappeared the moment the original lost consciousness, so he needed to stay awake to uphold rule three.

The fifth and final rule had nothing to do with efficiency or avoiding migraines. It simply forbade any clone from eating. That was all.

This rule came from the one time he’d seen a clone dispel after a meal. 

Half-digested food and other… _things_ had simply exploded out of it.

It was the single most disgusting thing he had ever witnessed. Since then, no clone had so much as drunk water. It wasn’t like they needed to anyways. They only lasted a few hours on average, and while they did get hungry, that hunger didn’t transfer to the original in any way.

* * *

“Are you still here boy? We’re closing in ten minutes.” The librarian said, scowling down at him.

Naruto looked up at the first word, but he didn’t move straight away. He was reluctant to go. There was over two hours until he was scheduled to dispel. Surely there was some way to get around this inconvenience.

“Could I take this with me?” He gestured at the adventure novel he was currently reading, the colorful illustrations on the cover showcasing a samurai standing before an oncoming storm.

The woman’s face didn’t get any friendlier. In fact, she just scowled harder. Naruto could see the discomfort clear on her face, as well as not a little fear.

“Without a library pass, you are not allowed to borrow the institution’s books.” The woman said, her tone clipped and professional - as if reading from a document.

Naruto wanted to sigh. He’d tried to get a library pass before, but there was no one willing to write one up for him. He’d been promised one three times by now from three different people and nothing had come of it.

He could probably try to push harder, but it was clear the librarians wanted nothing to do with him. This one was no exception.

With an air of resignation, he placed the book back in its place before he trudged towards the exit.

The moment he was out of sight, he darted aside, found an empty table, and used the Transformation Technique to turn into a chair. He stayed like that for almost half an hour, his chakra was getting dangerously low before he heard the sound of a door closing and noticed the lights flickering off.

Reverting to his original form, the blond grinned a devilish smile. 

Sneaking back to where he’d been before, he continued to read. The windows provided more than enough light.

* * *

“Hey ‘Raya, what’s with the seal on my back?” Naruto asked, trying to reach between his shoulder blades to the thing he’d only seen through the eyes of another him. It only appeared when he was actively channeling chakra - like his jinchūriki seal - but it was much smaller and looked completely different.

“Hmm?” His godfather looked up from the page he was writing, squinting confusedly at him.

Naruto wasn’t convinced. That had been far too deliberate a movement to be true confusion.

“The seal on my back? Who put it there? What does it do? It doesn’t look like my father’s style.” Naruto repeated, swinging his feet back and forth. 

He didn’t know much about sealing styles. But he had a suspicion, and seeming more knowledgeable than he was would help in verifying it.

“Oh, that old thing? Yeah. That’s mine.” Jiraiya answered, waving the question away as if it was no big deal.

“Mhm…” Naruto mused, a little placated by the easy admission. “What does it do though?”

“Ahh…” Jiraiya looked uncomfortable, face squeezing into a grimace as he put down his brush. “It stops you from revealing your status to others. It was a compromise with Sarutobi-sensei so I’d be allowed to tell you in the first place. I could probably remove it now if you promise not to tell anyone.”

“My… status?” Naruto scrounged his brow in confusion. “You mean the Kyuubi thing? Or who my dad is?”

The white haired man coughed, looking amused. “Both. It’d be dangerous if others knew.”

Naruto refrained from commenting that clearly half the village already knew the first one. Still, he was confused. “Tell people? Why would I tell people?”

Jiraiya winced. “Yeah… That’s the seal. It’s an anchoring charm to sustain a genjutsu. It doesn’t physically stop you, but it makes you not want to talk about it.”

Naruto blinked as he checked himself for genjutsu influence. Even a ‘kai’, didn’t change anything. But then, he’d done that a lot in the Academy. There’d been no change then either, and he’d apparently had this for years.

A shiver went down his back. “Yeah. I think I want that removed, please.”

Jiraiya nodded. “I’ll bring it up with Sarutobi-sensei.”

* * *

A few days later - seal on his back fully removed - Naruto waved goodbye as Jiraiya left through the village gates. 

His godfather had explained why it was necessary many times, but that didn’t make it any easier to see one of the few people that liked him leave.

Feeling his left arm being squeezed, the blond looked up at his guardian. 

Nazumi Hatori, 78 years old, retired Kunoichi, older than the Sandaime and the village of Konohagakure itself. She had been one of the unaffiliated ninja that had joined the burgeoning village at its inception. 

She had survived the first two world wars on the front lines, and spent the last as a high ranking operative in the village’s intelligence division. A security clearance of 8 out of a possible 10, and the one entrusted to take care of him in his godfather’s absence.

She was a strict and no-nonsense disciplinarian. She disliked his pranks and Jiraiya’s perverted tendencies and easygoing nature. She was also filled with a deep and pervasive kindness born from experiencing bloodshed and suffering. She was the one who had had the largest role in his upbringing.

Naruto was fairly sure she was the only reason he was still sane. With how much everyone hated his guts, and the other two authority figures in his life being far too busy to take care of him, without her…

He didn’t want to think about it.

Jiraiya was the one that taught him how to sneak and prank people, helped him with jutsu and told him stories about his parents. Nazumi was the one that had taught him how to read and write. She was the one that had taught him how to eat without making a mess, and how to clean up after himself. 

She had taught him manners and how to talk. Most importantly however, she had taught him how to _think_. 

Naruto had entered the Academy at 5 years old, but practically everything he knew before he started school he’d learned from Nazumi.

The grey haired woman smiled down at him before turning them around and heading for their apartment. “Have you done your homework yet, Naruto?” She asked in her usual raspy ‘old woman’ voice.

The blond nodded enthusiastically. He had. Both the history and math ones from Iruka-sensei, and the logic puzzles Nazumi was so fond of. 

Not _personally_ maybe, though that depended on if you counted clone labor as personal labor or not.

“Good. We’ll stop by Ichiraku’s on our way back as a reward for all your good work. How does that sound?”

Even if the blond could have contained his eagerness at that, his stomach would have betrayed him.

* * *

**Author’s Notes:**

_ For some reason the formatting for the inbuilt Notes function on this site really didn't agree with me. Either there is something I'm missing, or it wasn't meant to be used like I want to use it. _

Yes, I’m aware that Naruto is quite OoC (Out of Character) in this. 

Most notably, he is too smart compared with canon Naruto. He’s one of the ‘prodigy’ children, even. 

There is a reason I chose to do it this way beyond that I enjoy writing smarter characters. That reason being that I needed a smarter protagonist to tell the story I wanted to tell. If I’d used the intelligence of canon Naruto, he’d take too long to reach the conclusions I need him to reach.

In practice he’s still a ways below Itachi, Kakashi, his father, and even Sasuke, but he’s far more intelligent than any normal child his age has any right to be.

For those that are worried about OCs (Original Characters); yes, I am going to use them. They won’t take over the story or anything, but I’ll use them quite liberally to flesh out the background of the world.

Nazumi, the first major one to get introduced, is Naruto’s guardian in this fic. Jiraiya hired her once it became clear he couldn’t take care of the little rascal himself. And while Jiraiya is still Naruto’s primary guardian, Nazumi is the one that raised him. 

She’s an OC because there weren't any canon characters that came close to the profile I needed.

She’ll be a regular side character in the earlier chapters, though her story relevance starts and ends at her role as Naruto’s caretaker/grandmother figure.

Warning for any future readers: This story is very technical in its writing. I will go  _ very _ in-depth about the systems of chakra and various jutsu, mostly because that is what I enjoy writing.

If that isn’t your cup of tea, then you probably won’t enjoy this story very much. You could probably skim over those scenes if you’re only after plot and character development, but you’d end up skipping a lot of the story as a result.

Finally, due to the nature of this story, I have  _ far  _ too much to say. There is too much stuff happening once this story really gets going, and I can’t write it all out in full. All the scenes I deem critical are written out completely of course, but I’ve written a lot of summaries of events, and I often gloss over time periods where a lot of stuff happens.

This is pretty much unavoidable, as I’d end up with a fic rivaling the word count of the Wheel of Time otherwise. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. That means I have broken the ‘show don’t tell’ rule a few too many times for me to feel comfortable with it.

If you can look past these flaws, I promise to do my very best to write a story you will enjoy.


	2. Meeting With the Devil

_ Naruto _

Looking at all the market stalls, Naruto tried to find the one he was looking for. 

People paid him no mind as he walked past them. They didn’t even give him the aggressive dismissal he was so used to. So far he’d gotten zero hostile looks or uncomfortable glances.

His disguise was working fine then.

Honestly, he hadn’t done much. Using the Transformation Technique, he had turned his hair black, given himself a stronger jaw, brown eyes, and new clothes. Then he changed the way he walked. 

As far as anyone could tell, he was just a normal kid walking through the market. No jinchūriki here folks, na-a.

Forcing his grin down, Naruto went back to people-watching and sign searching.

People seemed happy today. Smiling and bargaining with stall owners and gossiping among themselves.

There were some grumpy faces that kept arguing with the merchants, since the price of fish had apparently increased. Channeling chakra to his ears, Naruto sharpened his hearing to try and figure out why. But all he got from it was that the supplier had increased the price. If anyone knew a deeper reason, they weren’t talking about it.

Frowning slightly, the Uzumaki tried to find out if something else had increased in price. 

… 

Didn’t seem like it. Not unless he counted a particular type of hand painted pottery, but that was only because the maker had passed away recently, and these were the last ones she’d made.

Listening to all the conversations happening around him, Naruto continued down the street.

He eventually found the place he was looking for, though it wasn’t a stall as he’d been led to believe.

Sitting at the end of the market district was a large building taking up the entire length of the street - stretching both upwards and backwards. It was dominated by stone, concrete, and wood, like most buildings in the village. The sign on the front proudly proclaimed its name as ‘Konoha General Supplies’. Beneath that was a list of names containing every company currently renting a part of the building, one of which was the one Naruto was looking for.

There were a lot of people inside, walking to and from and looking very busy. There was a reception area to his left, but the signs within the building was clearly labeled, so the disguised blond just followed the directions without bothering to ask.

He quickly entered an area that was owned by ‘Tetsuya’s Merchant Company’, one of the many merchant guilds that made its business here.

As he entered another lobby area, he picked up on a voice raised high above the random background noise, just a few decibels beneath a shout.

“What are you talking about, old man! You have the iron right there!” The voice was young. Around 16-18, in Naruto’s estimation. Something his sight corroborated on just a few seconds later. The younger, would-be customer, was obviously irritated, gesturing behind the shopkeeper to crates stacked full of grey metal bars.

Taking stock of the situation, Naruto saw a massive bald man with muscles on his muscles and tattoos crossing his body. He was old too, over middle aged. In fact, Naruto would estimate him to be approaching the third Hokage’s generation. 

Despite this, his body was still huge and powerful. Something that - combined with the tattoos and scowl - made for an intimidating appearance. The old man looked quite irritated as he argued with the younger man in front of him.

“And I’ll tell ya’ again, that’s not for sale. Not to chumps like ya’ at any rate, this er’ is processed ore from the heart of a Dragon Vein. Not something used in pots, pans or horseshoes.”

“It’s just iron! What’s so special about it? Dude, I need that or the boss will skin me alive. I’ve been looking for hours.”

The massive man leaned over the counter. His frame completely eclipsing the younger. 

Then he grinned. It was a smile with an inordinate amount of teeth in it. 

“Sure. I’ll sell it to ya’. It’ll be 11 040 Ryo for a crate.”

The customer sputtered, complained, got angry, and was quickly chased out by the larger man.

“Ah, sorry ya’ had to see that boy. What can I do for ya’?” 

Naruto blinked, just now registering that the intimidating shopkeeper was standing right in front of him.

“Ahh… Are you Tetsuya-san?” He asked, a bit shyly. He didn’t usually act so withdrawn, but the old man was more than a bit intimidating. He figured caution was the best way forward.

“Aye’.” Tetsuya answered, a broad grin stretched his mouth. “Greatest trader in all the Elemental Nations: Tetsuya Akuma, that’s me!”

Akuma? So not only did he look like a villain, but he was named after the devil? What was up with this guy? Was this really the person Teuchi bought his ingredients from?

“Well, I’m here to pick up Ramen Ichiraku’s order: Pork, beef, chicken, broth and an assortment of vegetables.” He answered, holding out the full list and request form Teuchi had filled out for him.

Tetsuya narrowed his eyes at the paper. Then scanned Naruto up and down. Stroking his chin, Tetsuya looked dubious. “I was told a blond boy with blue eyes would come pick it up, and even if ya’ have a paper with Teuchi’s signature, ya’ don’t fit that description.”

Oh! So he really was in the right place? That was a relief. He was afraid he’d mistaken the names or something.

“This is just a disguise, old man. Ninja tricks. Uzumaki Naruto, at your service!” The blond grinned cheekily, dispelling the Transformation and watching carefully for a reaction.

There wasn’t one. It seemed like the older man wasn’t a Konoha native.

“Ninja training?” The shopkeeper blinked, then he laughed. “So that’s why he entrusted it to ya’. I thought it would be a bit much for one kid, but if you’re a shinobi, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Still, ya’ be awfully young, aren’t ya’?” Tetsuya asked, squatting down and ruffling Naruto’s spiky mop of hair.

The blond squacked, zipping out of range as fast as he could, much to the amusement of the elder.

“I’m a shinobi in training! Haven’t graduated yet.” Naruto clarified, pouting up at the larger man. 

He wanted to be irritated, but a warm glow had begun to build in his chest. Tetsuya may look scary, but it seemed he had a kind personality beneath the gruff demeanor.

* * *

“Will you promise me something Naruto-kun?”

Naruto looked up at his best friend’s older brother. 

Itachi looked tired. He looked as if he’d gone a week without rest, but his face was still set in the warm smile Naruto liked so much. 

The only other person that smiled at him like that was obaa-chan. And even with her, it happened only rarely. She was far too stern to let her strict mask slip often.

“Sure, Itachi-san. What is it?”

“Promise me you’ll stay by Sasuke's side, no matter what.” The older boy said, his voice cracking a bit at the end. He looked over at his younger brother some meters away, still practicing his shuriken accuracy on the targets at the edge of the forest.

“Ok?” Naruto scrounged his brow together, confused at the direction this conversation had taken.

“You’ll stay his friend? Even if nobody else does? Even if he doesn’t want you around any more?”

Naruto shuffled from foot to foot, unsure of what was going on. This felt  _ very  _ important all of a sudden. “Yes.”

Itachi’s smile was relieved. “That’s good. Come, I’ll spot another spar between you two. I have work to do later.” Measuring ingredients like it was holy water, Naruto stirred the mix with slow movements, careful to not spill a single drop. 

* * *

The room was hot, the smell was heavenly, and Naruto was currently on the most important mission of his life. 

Teuchi had allowed him to try cooking for the customers.

Naruto felt trails of sweat running down his back.

He could hear Ayame laughing quietly at him, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted. Teuchi had told him love was the most important ingredient of all. If that was so, then this would be the best ramen ever made.

“Two more miso!” The graying man shouted back at them.

Ayame hummed, scribbling down the order on their list. “Busy day today. Wonder why?”

Having successfully completed his current masterpiece, Naruto put it in the ‘finished’ area. Awaiting serving.

“There’s a performer the next street over, it’s drawing a crowd.” Naruto informed her, getting started on the two miso bowls.

“Huh… Maybe I’ll go take a look.” Ayame mused as she carried out his art to the ungrateful customers.

Naruto grimaced at her response. 

The guy was pretending to be a ‘magician’, using misdirection and slights of hand to perform petty tricks. It wasn’t particularly impressive. Naruto could do the same with little difficulty. It was clear the guy was a civilian.

Though… when he thought about it, the concept wasn’t all that dissimilar to how he’d seen higher level ninja fight. Or ‘spar’ rather. He’d never seen a real fight with high-level ninja.

Even the spars, (happening quite literally all the time, at least  _ somewhere  _ in the village) were difficult to sneak a glimpse of. He had to use binoculars to see anything from far enough away that they wouldn’t notice and chase him off. Ninja didn’t appreciate people trying to spy on them.

Naruto blinked as an interesting memory entered his mind.

One of his clones had stumbled across a cat. A scared, angry, exhausted, and soaked cat.

While she had been hissing at him at first, she’d calmed down after he gave her some fish. He’d spent half an hour putting together a shelter for her, since there was no way the cat would allow herself to be picked up, never mind being carried back to his apartment. Plus, she was apparently named ‘Tora-chan’, according to her necklace, so she clearly belonged to someone else. Taking her home would probably be catnapping.

After he’d spent an hour of locating suitable branches, a ripped blanket, and put everything together, the cat had snuggled into the shelter and instantly fallen asleep. 

The second she had dozed off, three young shinobi had appeared from nowhere, grabbed Tora, then disappeared. 

The cat’s howls and screeching of protest had been ignored even as the genin had cursed back at the animal.

His clone had tried to catch up to them, but the three older kids had been much faster than him. He’d been left in the dust, the screeching protests of the animal ringing in his ears. 

He didn’t find any sign of the genin or the cat even after 20 minutes of non-stop searching. Dejected, the clone had dispelled itself two hours ahead of schedule, simply because of its depression… which was now the original’s.

Damn clone. What was that supposed to accomplish? He was just as sad as before, and now he would have to deal with a minor overload for the next set of memories.

Grumbling to himself, he decided not to make another clone. It was getting late, and It’d be unfair if he took out his bad mood on a newly formed clone when the one who had given it to him didn’t exist anymore.

Half an hour later, he grimaced as new memories popped up. Yup, headache. Though it was less than he’d expected. Was it because the first clone had so few memories to impart? It was only a couple hours old when it met Tora.

He’d have to confirm that hypothesis, if true, he’d have to experiment more with the optimum lifetime of the clones. Maybe he’d get over his 8 number limit? Naruto and Sasuke circled each other warily. Eyes switching between the limbs and face of their opponent.

* * *

Sasuke smirked. “Ready to get beat, blondie?” 

Naruto mirrored his expression. His heart beating faster in expectation of this moment.

After their regular endurance and taijutsu training, the teachers had set up a full tournament. Naruto and Sasuke had been placed in opposite brackets, so of course they’d met in the finals.

This was it. Their first official all-out taijutsu spar. They both competed for the top spot in their class, and this match would show once and for all who was the strongest.

They’d spared before obviously, but that had been extracurricular. It had been a while since last time, since Itachi rarely had the time to spot them anymore. They wouldn’t be allowed to use kunai or jutsu this time - this being a taijutsu-only match - but that was ok. They both tended to prefer taijutsu anyways.

It was definitely different from their usual tussles though. More formal. More serious.

The two seven year olds locked eyes for half a second and immediately exploded towards each other.

Naruto went for a tackle, coating his pants in chakra to slide across the harsh gravel. 

Sasuke jumped to the side, stomping down on the blond’s position, but Naruto had already used his hands to push himself into the air. 

Spinning his body as fast as he could, he sent his foot crashing into the earth where the Uchiha had been standing. A lot of dust was kicked up as it hit the earth.

Sasuke moved through the dust, ignoring the stinging in his eyes and poor visibility to get at the blond’s jacket.

Naruto twisted, slipping out of the garment before it could be used against him.

Then he was pushed on the defensive, weaving between fast kicks and powerful punches as he sought an opening. 

It came as the two children reached the edge of the ring. Sasuke - seeing an opportunity - overextended on his next punch. It allowed the blond to grab his arm and swing him around.

Sasuke stumbled, took two steps to right himself… 

And the match was over.

The Uchiha had stepped out of the ring.

Cheering and applause drowned out the booing of Sasuke’s cheerleaders.

Sasuke himself was frozen in an attack pose, his face stricken.

Naruto smiled awkwardly at him, holding out the seal of reconciliation as Iruka instructed.

The Uchiha didn’t move. Staring at the line denoting the ring like it had personally offended him.

Shifting his attention towards Naruto’s still outstretched arm, the Uchiha snarled. “That doesn’t count! Again! I want to go again!”

“Ah, Sasuke-kun. You can spar again after school. I’ll referee the match if you wish, but the tournament is decided. Naruto-kun is the winner.” Iruka informed him politely.

“No!” The Uchiha shouted, shoving the blond backwards. It wasn’t a very hard shove, but the Uzumaki hadn’t been expecting it. He tripped backwards and collided with the ground.

Naruto burst into smoke.


	3. Red Moon

_ Naruto _

Naruto’s head snapped up, a horrified look on his face.

The taijutsu tournament had been today? He’d completely forgotten and sent a clone in his stead. 

For some reason, that clone had decided to compete in the tournament despite knowing it was a bad idea. Seeing it as a challenge to go through the entire thing without being hit even once.

That had backfired in the worst way possible.

Holding back a swear, Naruto made a beeline for the Academy, taking to the rooftops to reach it the fastest.

But Sasuke wasn’t there. He’d left right after their match. Naruto went to go look for him, but he was stopped when Iruka gave him detention for using clones to substitute for himself in class. 

He tried to explain how important it was to find Sasuke, and though Iruka was sympathetic to his plight, he didn’t budge.

It drove Naruto up a wall. It was probably the first time he’d  _ ever  _ been angry at Iruka before. The man was fair to a fault, normally something Naruto appreciated a great deal, but right now it was stopping him from apologizing to his friend.

… 

The moment Naruto was let out of detention, he formed his favorite hand sign and watched as two dozen clones shimmered into existence. 

They all knew the same things he did, so talking was unnecessary.

They all scattered in different directions, each going for their own corner of the village to begin a search pattern. Some of the clones went to scout Sasuke’s usual haunts, while Naruto’s real body went to his friend’s home. A place he rarely visited.

Sasuke wasn’t in the Uchiha compound. Neither was Itachi, and the other clan members had been especially unfriendly lately. He made a hasty retreat after one too many glares.

Searching through all of Sasuke’s usual hideouts gave zero results. Even with him and his clones looking for hours, he found nothing.

Naruto was contemplating just flooding the village with clones. But the last time he’d done that, he’d nearly given the Hokage a heart attack. After that he’d been made to promise never to use a kinjutsu for anything other than emergencies again. And while this was serious, it wasn’t  _ quite  _ an emergency.

He continued searching throughout the evening, but Konoha was massive. Finding a single person with no clue as to their whereabouts was not easy.

He returned to the Uchiha compound after the sun passed beneath the horizon, hoping to catch up to his friend before he went to bed. But this time he wasn’t even allowed entry. There were no explanations given. He tried to argue, but the guards were more stubborn than he was. It was like talking to brick walls.

Dejected, he gave up and went home. 

He’d been going above his schedule with the clones again, so he would have to deal with headaches again. That plus all the memories of his failure soured his mood enough that he almost snapped at Nazumi when she asked what was wrong.

He managed to catch himself in time, mumble some weak excuses and go to bed before he did something he’d regret. 

* * *

Naruto awoke to chaos. 

The streets were buzzing with activity. People were crying openly in the streets. Hollow looks and shadowed faces were everywhere. Shinobi were running all over the village. 

The reason?

The Uchiha were dead.

The second founding clan of Konoha. A legacy stretching back farther than anyone could remember.

Killed by one man.

Itachi Uchiha; 13 years old, kinkiller, newly branded S-rank missing-nin.

A massacre. There was only one survivor.

_ Sasuke. _

Naruto had tried to see him at the hospital, but he’d once again been turned away. Sasuke was in a coma and under heavy guard. Naruto wasn’t even allowed to sit outside the door to his room, that’s how strict it was.

So the blond brooded in the hospital lobby, staring at the fibers that made up his pants as if they held all the knowledge in the world.

How could this have happened?

_ How could Itachi…? _

_ Why would Itachi…? _

_ Why did only Sasuke survive…? _

His hands clutched at his scalp as something dark welled up inside him.

It made no sense. Itachi was probably the kindest person Naruto knew. He’d discussed philosophy with him. He’d played with him. Itachi had… made him promise to stay Sasuke’s friend… no matter what.

How… how long had Itachi planned this? And if he truly was a monster, then why had he asked Naruto to-?

How did he do it? Itachi was only 13. The Uchiha clan numbered over 400 members, and a lot of those were high ranking ninja. No matter how skilled, Itachi shouldn’t have been able- 

The world was going in and out of focus - turning red at the edges. The blond could feel his mind spinning in circles.

The echoes of screams and shouts of panic sounded all around him, boring into his ears like icicles. The image of a clan compound awash in blood flashed before his eyes.

His thoughts jumped forwards and backwards without rhyme or reason. 

This was the first day in months he’d gone without any Shadow Clones at all. There was only one of him now, and he’d felt oddly stuffy since morning. But this… It was like he was going to explode.

The sound of glass shattering drew his attention. 

He looked up as shards of a window rained down around him, failing to touch him as it rebounded off the red and blue chakra bursting out of him.

Looking around, he finally noticed the state of the lobby. 

It couldn’t have been that long since he got lost in his thoughts, but the hospital lobby was all but empty. The only ones left was an almost catatonic nurse sitting in the corner, a woman staring at him with scared but defiant eyes, and a crying boy about the same age as him that the woman was shielding with her own body. 

Naruto’s thoughts halted.

The red chakra thickened. 

The nurse whimpered.

Naruto threw himself out the window he’d inadvertently broken, sprinting across the rooftops of the village faster than he’d ever moved in his life.

He ended up in an empty training field, broken kunai and torn earth was everywhere. It didn’t seem to have been cleaned up since its last use.

Breathing carefully, Naruto tried to calm down. 

He tried to push his chakra down. Half of it listened to him, but that only made it harder to control the other half. A red shroud started to manifest around him as Naruto screamed in anger and despair. 

His emotions were being magnified. He could feel it. 

The red chakra,  _ the Kyuubi _ , was enhancing his emotions, feeding off of his confusion, rage, and despair while amplifying them.

_ Itachi didn’t kill the Uchiha, he’s the scapegoat. _

He didn’t know where the thought came from, but it resonated within him. A lifeline filled with thorns and poison. 

No way the gentle and caring older brother would do something so horrible.

But that meant… that meant...

**_Destroy them!_ **

Naruto  _ screamed _ . It was a rougher sound than any he’d ever made in his life, he barely recognized the voice as his own.

Slamming a fist into the ground. A small crater formed in the earth beneath him.

He couldn’t… 

He couldn’t…

He needed to… **_Destroy them!_** ... to… _des-_ … get rid of this chakra!

Twisting his hands into shape, Naruto declared his technique. “Mass Shadow Clone!” 

Thousands of him manifested themselves with more smoke and wasted chakra than he’d used since his first week learning the technique, dividing the red chakra among them.

Like this, there was no problem suppressing it.

Even barely able to think and in emotional turmoil, the Kyuubi couldn’t overwhelm thousands of him at once from behind its seal.

Slowly but surely, Naruto calmed down. His breaths become longer and longer, his heart beating slower and slower.

His thoughts having reached some semblance of clarity again, he began to dispel the clones around him one by one. They went without trouble, only the echo of impressions returned with them.

Once he was alone again, he took stock of himself. 

His pants had torn from his mad sprint here. One of his sandals was missing, and his socks were ruined. His chakra was mostly alright, the majority had returned when the clones dissipated.

He’d still lost a good deal of it though, but that only meant he no longer felt bloated. The Kyuubi’s influence was completely gone. No trace of it left. His body seemed none the worse for wear.

Turning back the way he came, he flinched as he came face-to-face with the white mask of an ANBU. The two stared at each other for a moment before the masked man nodded once in recognition, then disappeared.

Breathing out in relief, the blond trudged home. He tried to think as little as possible as he crawled under the blankets and wished to fall asleep.

His stomach protested, growling hungrily. On top of that, the stench of sweat clung to him.

… 

There was no way he could sleep now.

He left his room, as miserable as he’d ever been. 

Obaa-chan was there. Humming softly as she stirred a pot of stew with a massive spoon. There was a lot of food there.

Wrinkling her nose as he entered, Nazumi pointed her ladle at him. “You need to clean up young man. Get back here once you’re presentable. I’ll have food ready.”

Naruto couldn’t stop the tears even if he’d wanted to. 

He hadn’t been able to cry for the entire day. An iron ball had lodged itself in his throat and refused to leave. His eyes had stayed as dry as the desert. Not even the horrifying event with the Nine-Tails had changed that. But now… 

He barely knew what had happened. Didn’t know how it had happened, or why. And at this point he refused to think about it in fear of causing the idiot fox to act up again. 

What he did know was that the world had changed forever. A piece of it had been gouged out, and it was left lesser for it.

He barely even noticed that he’d reached his grandmother. He clutched her dress closely as she patted his head. Tears and snot mixed together and made a right mess on the old woman’s clothes, but she didn’t protest. She only held him closer, murmuring soothing words and pleasant nonsense.

* * *

_ Hiruzen Sarutobi _

Exhaling perfect rings made of smoke, the Third Hokage stared down at the red eyed and fidgeting seven year old before him. 

He didn’t need the incident with the Kyuubi’s chakra to know how Naruto had taken the Uchiha Massacre.

Sighing, Hiruzen contemplated how to explain what he’d found. Naruto may be a ‘prodigy’, but he was still just a child.

Minato certainly hadn’t made things easy for him.

“The good news is that the seal is as strong as ever.” He started, watching carefully as Naruto sagged in relief, then going back to fidgeting as he heard what was unsaid.

“And the bad news?” The Uzumaki questioned.

Sarutobi hummed, knocking out used tobacco from his pipe. “The bad news is that Minato made that seal in a very… irresponsible manner.”

Frowning, Naruto looked down at his stomach, despite his seal being currently invisible on top of being covered by a shirt.

“When Mito-sama first made the seal that bound the Nine-Tails, it was made to completely immobilize the beast. As the first jinchūriki, she didn’t ever intend to  _ use  _ its power. It was merely meant to stop the monster from rampaging. This philosophy carried over to your mother’s seal, though it was significantly altered from the original Mito-sama had used. Despite the precedence the other villages had set, it still wasn’t meant to be used as a weapon. Mito-sama believed in Hashirama-sama’s dream of peace, and of using the power of the bijuu merely as deterrents.” Hiruzen’s face sagged slightly. “It seems Minato didn’t agree.”

Naruto looked stricken. Hiruzen couldn’t blame him. He himself had felt all his years twice over when he’d come to that conclusion.

“The Eight Trigrams Seal, infused with the power of the Death God, is without a doubt the strongest seal I have ever seen or heard of. Using Mito’s original design as a base, it is vastly more complex and dynamic while still retaining a stability beyond what mortals could accomplish on their own. It’s probably one of the most powerful seals in the world. It will allow you to contain the Kyuubi even without your mother’s special binding chakra. Or it would have, if Minato didn't leave intentional gaps in the lock.” Grimacing slightly, Sarutobi stood from his chair to gaze out across the village.

Twisting his chakra  _ just so _ , wind took the smoke from his pipe outside without stinking up the rest of the room. The action was automatic, something he had done a thousand times before and would do a thousand times again.

“The Nine-Tails is very much restrained, but its power is allowed to flow through you. In fact, its chakra is forced into your own network, I don’t believe the demon could stop it if it wanted to. This enlarges your own chakra reserves as your body, mind and soul integrate the new energy. It also provides a rather strong regenerative effect, which you have probably noticed already. In addition, it allows you to draw directly upon the Kyuubi’s chakra in battle. All of which are huge boons to any shinobi. But it also allows the fox to push its energy into you whenever your emotions run high.”

His fidgeting increasing, Naruto looked down with a face twisting with guilt. Hiruzen winced. That hadn’t been the point he’d intended to make at all.

“The problem is that this feature makes the seal erode. As powerful as it is, even your father’s Eight Trigrams Seal will eventually break down with the corrosive chakra of the Nine-Tails running through it. In the best case scenario, we have around 35 years until the seal will completely break down. Though only if it’s not corroded further by channeling the Kyuubi’s chakra in larger quantities.”

Naruto froze. Sarutobi held back another wince.

_ What the hell were you doing Minato? _

“Though I can tell there are other security measures in place besides the obvious, it is likely those are only there in the event that the seal is forcibly breached for one reason or another.” 

Naruto looked almost broken, eyes gazing at empty air without seeing, a flicker of red passing through his normal blue.

Hiruzen sagged into his chair, giving Naruto the smile he reserved only for his closest family and the children under his protection.

“That means you have 30 years to master the Kyuubi’s chakra, subdue it, and create a new seal.”

Naruto blinked, focus coming back and the red disappearing. 

Hiruzen could  _ see  _ the moment his words registered and the mounting despair was replaced with determination. 

Sarutobi was glad to see it. If the blond’s intellect took after his father’s as much as it seemed to have, then 30 years should be more than enough.

“To help you in this endeavor, I’ve gathered the writings that Mito-sama left us on the subject. They can’t leave the tower, but feel free to come here and peruse them whenever you feel like it. Your mother didn’t leave much regarding the subject, but Jiraiya is gathering info of how other jinchūriki has managed to subdue their respective tailed beasts. If this is truly the only path Minato left you, we’ll help you walk it.” 

Seeing the effects his words were having on the boy, Hiruzen grinned. Things may be horrible right now, but they’d come back from this. Konoha would endure, as it always had. His predecessors' wills were still held within the hearts of every villager.

“You were born with a heavy burden Naruto, but you have also inherited the Will of Fire. Let it burn within you, and things will be alright.”

Eyes going wide, Naruto stared up at him. 

His lips wobbled and his eyes turned glassy. Naruto nodded once, determination all but bursting out of him. Hiruzen felt some of the warmth he’d been missing in the last 24 hours come back to him. Even more of it returned when Naruto moved around his desk to crawl into his lap.

The blond was not broken. He had decided to grab the opportunity Hiruzen had shown him both hands. The old man could see that as clear as day, but for now, it seemed he just needed comfort. 

Hiruzen was happy to provide, so he stroked careful circles on Naruto’s back, using his chakra like a blanket to cover the crying child, infusing it with feelings of protection and comfort.

* * *

_ Naruto _

Two weeks passed and Sasuke didn’t return. 

Naruto had heard his friend woke up six days after the massacre, but they were still keeping him under lock in the hospital. And Naruto still didn’t have visitation rights. Not that he knew what to say when he saw his friend again.

Otherwise, very little happened. The shinobi were in an uproar, and the roofs were heavily trafficked both day and night. Naruto didn’t feel like his usual pranks were worth it either. It just seemed… in poor taste.

So he spent most of his time just lazing about, reading books and trying to sneak out of the Academy. Iruka would have none of it though. His Shadow Clones would be instantly disrupted if their chakra network was disturbed. They were as easily dispelled as genjutsu if you knew what you were dealing with. And now that Iruka knew what he was up to, he didn’t let a single clone pass undispelled.

Whenever Naruto got within range, a burst of chakra from Iruka would either confirm or deny if he was there in person or not. If he wasn’t, he’d be given detention and have to do five times the amount of homework everyone else got. 

Finally giving up, he resigned himself to the monotony of school. It wasn’t like he wasn’t already going through it. It just meant his clone schedule would be a bit awkward to uphold. 

And it wasn’t all bad. His other friend was still there, but though Naruto challenged Shikamaru to countless Shogi matches, the blond had very little hope of actually winning. He’d never managed before after all.

Finally, after a month of absence, Sasuke returned.

He had... changed.

The Last Uchiha didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t play. He barely even looked at Naruto, passing him by like any other academy student. His demeanor had become frigid.

No matter what the blond did or said, Sasuke barely reacted. The look in his eyes did not spell anything good. It was a mix between wild eyed fear, and depressed despair. Then there were the times when they turned  _ scary _ , becoming filled with determination and a burning hatred.

Naruto had no idea what he’d seen. But something must have happened, Sasuke wouldn’t have spent so much time in the hospital otherwise.

The only way Naruto could communicate with his friend anymore was fighting.

In spars, Sasuke had become far more aggressive. He quickly defeated anyone pitted up against him, skill and anger overcoming all of their yearmates with ease. 

A detached air hung about him, and even when he broke one of their classmate’s arms, he didn’t react, and didn’t apologize. It wasn’t maliciousness as much as pure apathy. Nobody in their year could match him, and he didn’t care to hold his punches anymore.

Nobody could match him, except Naruto.

Their matches turned into brutal brawls, where dirty tricks and painful attacks became the norm. The first time they fought, Sasuke won. Cracking one of Naruto’s ribs and sending him flying out of the ring.

The second time, Naruto outmaneuvered him, giving Sasuke a minor concussion before throwing him out of bounds when the Uchiha counterattacked.

The third time, the match was cancelled when Sasuke broke Naruto’s foot.

Officially, there was no fourth time. The teachers had banned them from fighting each other. 

Outside the Academy, Naruto hunted him down every evening. Few words were exchanged, but Naruto got more beaten up in those matches than he’d ever been before.

This brutality, this  _ aggression _ ... All the feelings that Sasuke harbored within himself finally found an outlet. There were no referees. No spotter. They kept it to taijutsu, but the ring had been abolished, and there was no time limit.

Naruto won.

Every. Single. Time.

It wasn’t that he was better at taijutsu, or that he was stronger or faster than Sasuke. The Uchiha actually had a slight advantage in all those areas. And Naruto never went as hard against Sasuke as his friend did against the blond. The reason was simply that Naruto refused to let Sasuke beat him. No matter how badly he was thrown around. No matter how many muscles he tore or bones he fractured, Naruto kept standing back up.

Sasuke could fight for almost an hour straight. The stamina and determination needed for such a thing was insane. Especially for a child his age.

But Naruto was an Uzumaki. He was the Nine-Tails jinchūriki. He didn’t know how far that allowed him to go. All he knew was that he’d never reached a limit before. Oh, it was hard. It was painful, it was grueling. He’d never experienced anything like it.

But… 

But he couldn’t let Sasuke go through this alone. Couldn’t.  _ Wouldn’t. _

Seeing his friend in such pain, it tore at his heart much worse than any wound or broken bone ever could. Those healed in a day or two anyways. They were unimportant.

As long as Sasuke was accepting their fights on such conditions, he couldn’t do anything less than his best. To do so would be unthinkable. An insult. Unproductive and distasteful.

And so they continued. Every day without fail.

The location would change: At a training hall near Sasuke’s new apartment. At a field close to Naruto’s house. In the woods outside the Academy. But the fights themselves were always the same; brutal hand to hand fights where the two of them would wail on each other’s bodies until Sasuke gave in.

Slowly but surely, his friend’s eyes began to hold something other than fear, despair, contempt, and hatred. They began to shine with acknowledgment.

It wasn’t quite a thanks, and hadn’t yet reached true respect. Naruto doubted he’d ever get a thank you, but it was  _ something  _ at least.

Shortly after that, Sasuke finally began to talk again. He’d never been completely mute, but other than confirmations, denials or short directions. It was really difficult to get him to say anything.

And the first thing he said was: “I’m going to kill him.”

Naruto looked over at his sparring partner. Both of them lay on their backs, panting with exhaustion. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then closed it again.

How did he respond to that? From what he’d gathered, Itachi really  _ did  _ kill all the Uchiha. Sasuke saw him do it even. But there was still this tiny core of doubt within the blond. He’d  _ known  _ Itachi. He’d talked with him for extended periods of time. Itachi talked of peace and cooperation. And he  _ had. Not. Lied _ . 

Naruto could tell when people lied to him. It was another ability he got from his furry little tenant. Although he’d only figured that out after reading the texts the Hokage had lent him.

He wasn’t at Mito Uzumaki’s level of ‘negative emotion’ sensing, but if someone tried to lie to his face - no matter how well a role they played, Naruto could  _ tell _ . He’d been able to for as long as he could remember.

Uchiha Itachi had not been lying. He truly believed in the ideals he talked about. His kindness was not false. His smile was real. He had not been wearing a mask.

_ Not unless the mask fooled even himself. _

It was possible that Itachi ‘snapped’ under all the pressure he’d been under. That was the consensual opinion in the village anyways, but… 

Itachi had truly been busy during those last few weeks. And he’d looked incredibly stressed the few times Naruto had seen him. But to go crazy just like that… It seemed unlikely. And it still didn’t explain  _ how  _ he’d done it.

But none of those thoughts were things he could share with Sasuke. Not now. Maybe not for years to come.

When the subject came up again, when Sasuke’s hatred had cooled from a roaring fire to glowing embers. When his personality had settled more. Perhaps they could revisit those last days before the Massacre. Because no matter what the real explanation was, no matter who the real culprit was, Naruto would stand with his friend.

He’d promised, after all.


	4. Fail, Learn, Succeed

_Naruto_

“Heya, Tetsuya-san! I’ve come to pick up our order.” Naruto greeted as he walked into the familiar supply store.

This wasn’t a place people went to buy things for private use. It was a place that catered primarily to store owners. To be able to buy things here required a dispensation note.

Not that it was a problem for Naruto. He was here on a job from Teuchi.

As the place was for other businesses to restock their own wares. It’s stock was mostly essentials like meat, minerals, lumber, cloth, and even living animals sometimes. It was quite the diverse selection. A coalition of several merchant groups instead of a singular entity. ‘Tetsuya’s Merchant Company’ was just one of many guilds that had set up shop here.

“Naruto! Long time no see!” The large man exclaimed, sticking his head out the back door. “Come help me with this, will ya’? I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Traipsing over, Naruto grinned at the old man. “Nobody is as young as they used to be, Tetsuya-san. That’s how aging works.”

A harking laugh answered him as Tetsuya led them through a series of corridors and offices. People looked curiously at the blond, but no-one seemed to mind his presence despite his signature orange appearance. Rare that, were they all from outside Konoha?

Finally, they passed through a large steel door. Entering an enormous hall. It allowed the blond to get a good look at the mess in the middle of it all. A massive stack of firewood had collapsed, spilling out across the floor, burying everything that hadn’t been dug up and taking up far more space than was intended. 

The stack was taller and broader than his house, holding an absolutely staggering amount of volume.

Naruto looked around with interest. He’d never actually been back here before. The front of the shop was sufficient for most purposes. This was too large to actually be part of the service building though. So this was the actual storehouse then? He’d wondered about that.

There were hundreds of people here. Some flinched when they saw him, and Naruto had to hold back a sigh.

Ever since that incident in the hospital a few months ago, he’d been treated… perhaps not _worse_ , but people were certainly more afraid of him now than before. The pranks helped some, and it was less noticeable now that it had been the first week, but it still grated.

Grinning at the seven year old in challenge, Tetsuya pointed at the collapsed stack of wooden blocks. “Think ya’ can fix that up before the day’s end? Would be much appreciated.”

Cracking his knuckles, Naruto smiled. “Certainly, Tetsuya-san. Teuchi doesn’t need the refill before tomorrow anyways. But this is kind of a lot to do for free…” 

Tetsuya’s hoarse laugh echoed again. Ruffling Naruto’s hair again, the large man smiled. “Of course, of course. Ya’ll be amply compensated, how does 3000 Ryo sound?”

Naruto’s eyes nearly bogged out of his head. 3000? That was almost twice as much as he earned from Teuchi in a week!

Naruto found himself nodding gleefully before he’d fully processed the number.

“Great. Now, let’s see what ya’ can do.”

The way Tetsuya said that was kind of unnerving, but Naruto shook it off. For 3000 Ryo, he would need a lot more than ‘unnerving’ to dissuade him.

Crossing his fingers in a familiar seal, twenty copies of him poofed into existence. 

Springing forward, he and some of his clones formed chains of bodies to gather it all in one pile. Others went to clear out collapsed piles, creating secure areas that he could build from. It was a lot of menial work, but nothing particularly difficult.

A couple of the clones actually started juggling the smaller pieces. Trying not to laugh and resisting the temptation to join in, Naruto snapped at them to focus on the task. A chorus of “Yes boss!” masked sullen mutterings, and something sounding awfully close to mutiny. 

Naruto narrowed his eyes, but the perpetrator was hidden from him by the leagues of identical copies. Oh well, after the dispel. He’d know who it was for sure. But then... how would he punish himself, for something an extension of himself did against himself?

Shaking off the confusing question, Naruto quickly got into a rhythm. Tossing stacks of firewood to the next in line as fast as they were delivered to him. Coating his hands with chakra so as to not get any splinters in them, he quickly went through and cleaned up the mess.

He nodded in satisfaction as the last of the firewood was gathered, tied up with hardy rope and secured with a metal fence.

All in all, it had taken almost two and a half hours. Not too shabby for so much money.

Turning around as the twenty clones popped, he finally noticed he had an audience.

Tetsuya was grinning from ear to ear, gathering money from the grumbling workers around him. Once he’d made the whole round, he almost skipped over to an incredulous Naruto. The crafty old man counted out about one fourth of the stack, before handing him what he owed him.

“You are… the worst person…” The blond muttered, looking at the 9000+, that Tetsuya gleefully used to fill his inner pocket.

“Don’t be like that.” The old man chided, pushing Naruto towards the exit. Completely ignoring all the sour looks directed his way.

“Was that actually worth the money, or did you just scam all your coworkers?” Naruto muttered. There’s no way some firewood stacking would be worth that much. Heck, maybe Tetsuya tore it all down himself! Maybe he truly was as evil as he looked!

“Of course. That disaster was clogging up space, slowing throughput, and generally being a pain in everyone’s ass. But nobody had the time to deal with it. It would have been a full day’s work for 10 men. At least.” Tetsuya was still grinning, looking far too satisfied with himself.

Naruto frowned. That couldn’t be right, could it?

“We were debating hiring ninja, since we’re in Konoha and all, but they’re really expensive. Then you walked in, and well…” Tetsuya cackled, the strange sound more similar to a wheezing cough.

“What was the bet about anyhow?” The blond asked, curious despite himself.

“Well…” Tetsuya mused, jumping into a side door to retrieve a box of pork and chicken. Cold wind buffeted Naruto as he looked inside. A fridge? How did it work? His own was seal-based and set up by his godfather. But something this large had to be prohibitively difficult to keep cold for any length of time.

Returning from the icy room, the old man dumped the box into Naruto’s hands. The blond staggered as his center of gravity shifted unexpectedly, but quickly righted himself. 

Tetsuya’s grin grew.

“What?” the Uzumaki demanded. Getting more irritated by the minute.

Tetsuya’s gaze turned considering. His smile shifted into something less gleeful, and more happy.

“You don’t even realize it yourself, do you? No. You’re smart. You probably know, but you haven’t internalized it yet.” The old man stated, his voice was unusually serious.

Frowning slightly, Naruto wracked his mind for what this was about. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything. Staring impatiently at the merchant, the blond willed him to continue.

Tetsuya sighed, but then turned and waved for him to follow.

Naruto dumped his package on a chair as they entered the merchant’s office. That thing was seriously cold. He liked his fingers with functioning nerves, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, Tetsuya found a place behind his desk. Clearing out masses of paperwork, he created an open space between them. Then he put down a heavily muscled arm, tattoos shifting ominously.

“Hey, kid. Let’s arm wrestle.”

Naruto blinked at him. Staring at the mass of muscle and intimidation that was Tetsuya Akuma. The old man outmassed the seven year old more than four times over.

Despite that, Naruto grinned. “Prepare to go down, old man!”

Dragging over a suitable chair, he placed his hand in Tatsuya’s. The blond’s palm was easily swallowed by the sea of muscle the merchant carried around.

The pressure on Naruto’s hand gradually began to increase. Slowly at first, then quicker until it reached a point where the blond actually had to exert himself to keep from moving. Shortly thereafter, the force leveled off as Tetsuya’s muscles pulsed with effort.

Grunting, the old man’s brow twitched in irritation, but he nodded towards the apparent stalemate nonetheless. “See that? That’s what shinobi training gets you. Children capable of matching full grown men who have worked for it their entire lives.”

Naruto was silent for a moment. Taking in the sight before him. Then he nodded and pushed Tetsuya’s hand into his desk. The feat accomplished seemingly without effort. Though that was an illusion. Locking his arm was one thing, actually pushing Tetsuya back required him to consciously regulate the chakra flowing through his arm and back.

A single drop of sweat trailed down his neck.

Once it was over, the old man relaxed, breathed out heavily as he began to laugh.

“And that was everything I had too! You’re not a normal academy student, are you, kid?”

Naruto eyed the old man warily. It didn’t seem like Tetsuya knew what he was, but… “You seem to know a great deal about ninja.”

The merchant grinned, a grey tooth showing in an otherwise perfectly cared for set. “Well, I’ve lived off and on in Konohagakure for over five years now. And then there’s this.” Saying so, he pulled up his shirt, showing off a litany of minor scars, along with a very prominent long white one trailing from just beneath his ribs to his hip bone.

“If a normal human ever finds themselves on the wrong side of a shinobi - any shinobi - they would be lucky to escape with their lives. And that’s in the best case scenario. Against superhumans like you. There’s nothing we ordinary folk can do.”

Naruto stared at the scar with wide eyes. That was from a kunai, if he wasn’t mistaken. They’d learned triage and wound categorization in the Academy, but this was much older than anything they’d tried to identify in school. “Ah…” The blond started, unsure of how to proceed.

“I bet those men that a kid younger than ten could finish the job in less than a day. They knew you had shinobi training, but none of them really understood what that meant. It’s not easy to internalize something so beyond your own frame of reference.” Tetsuya explained, tapping his inner pocket for emphasis.

“You should keep that in mind, Naruto. So you don’t go breaking people in two just because you couldn’t measure your own strength. I’ve seen that happen once. It’s not pretty.” The old man’s face darkened for a moment, lost in memories.

Tetsuya fixed the blond with a heavy gaze, his next words carrying a weight Naruto was not used to the old man using. “You’re training to make your body into a weapon of destruction. Don’t forget that.”

* * *

Going through the hand signs for the Great Fireball, Naruto tried to turn his chakra into fire.

He failed. 

Again.

Coughing up smoke and ash, the blond child suppressed a sigh. Feeling his charred lips heal, he looked over at Sasuke’s perfect Shadow Clone. 

Perhaps it was just not meant to be. Naruto wasn’t very in tune with fire. He didn’t actually know what his elemental affinity was, those ‘Elemental Papers’ were far too expensive to justify buying one. Though he could probably get Jiraiya to get him one when the old man returned.

“Well blondie, would you like to try again?” One of the Sasukes asked while the other smirked at him.

“Nah. I think it’s a wash. I’ll keep trying on my own but…” Shrugging, Naruto tried to ignore the genuinely cruel undertone to Sasuke’s question. It wasn’t large, but he’d never spoken like that _before_. 

In fact, Sasuke’s entire personality was different. Even after his immediate grieving period was over. Sasuke rarely smiled anymore. If he did, it was as a sarcastic smirk, sometimes even a cruel one. Though Naruto didn’t think the raven-haired boy even noticed that himself.

“So... would you like to work more on your Sharingan?” Naruto asked, he wanted to speak gently but forced his tone to stay emotionless.

Sasuke flinched, the reminder almost like a physical blow. But he grit his teeth and nodded. He’d been the one to ask for reminders after all, forcing himself to use it even as it hurt him.

Naruto wasn’t sure if he approved or not. Overcoming trauma was supposed to be healthy, but this case was particularly extreme. Perhaps suppression was the right choice? It was the mind trying to protect itself, after all. If Sasuke denied himself that opportunity, wouldn’t that be bad? Naruto didn’t know. There weren’t many psychology books in the libraries, and those he’d found weren’t focused on anything even resembling Sasuke’s situation.

So as Sasuke’s eyes turned red, one tomoe swirling lazily in each eye, Naruto summoned ten clones. It was the only way he’d stand a chance with Sasuke using those eyes. He’d start with 10, and escalate from there. It was what the training was for, after all.

Still... as another brutal training session began, Naruto tried to ignore the dull throbbing behind his eyes. Sasuke wasn’t the only one hurting himself with this.

* * *

_Sasuke_

Months passed. Things calmed down, and though the Uchiha district stood like a ghost town at the edge of the village, the topic of Sasuke’s clan quickly became taboo. Especially around him.

Sasuke got a lot of sympathy from the villagers. The pity and responsibility they felt compelled them to treat him better than they had any Uchiha in years. He got free food, clothes, and appliances. He was invited to countless gatherings and social events. The Last Uchiha was treated almost like a prince within the village.

Sasuke hated it.

In fact, he utterly despised it.

None of these people were doing these things for _him_ . More out of a sense of guilt for their mistreatment of the clan before their downfall. _Despicable._

Their attitude carried over to the Academy as well. He’d had fans before, being successful in school and belonging to a prestigious family saw to that. But _now_ , now he had fan clubs.

As a result, he tended to avoid people wherever possible. Naruto was the only exception, as the blond had forced himself back into his life and refused to leave.

But despite himself, Sasuke appreciated the gesture. It was… _nice,_ not being alone all the time. Not that he’d ever admit that out loud.

As for the Academy, Sasuke managed to retain his number 1 rank. Not that there was much point to it anymore. His father would never- Sasuke cut that thought off at the knees.

It was strange though, Naruto was better than him in the theoreticals, and the blond won every serious spar they had. Unless the rules gave esoteric win conditions, the Uzumaki’s sheer stamina and resilience allowed him to bulldoze through anything Sasuke could come up with. He’d hated it at first. The fact that he wasn't even the strongest in their year. His goal was so much higher than that. 

But if it was Naruto… He didn’t think he minded.

Speaking of the impossible blond, his friend was changing. It didn’t happen overnight, but every week Naruto seemed a little better, a little smarter, a little older. It almost felt like Naruto was aging in fast forward. Physically, he was the same as ever. But he didn’t act his age. Even less than Sasuke did.

It reminded him of Itachi.

The thought made his stomach curl. He hadn’t even known Itachi at their age. His brother was Sasuke’s senior by 6 years, he was all of 1 year old when Itachi was the same age as they were now. But Sasuke had grown up constantly being compared with his older brother. Always falling short. And this feeling… It reminded him of what Itachi had once been.

A person that got further and further away even as Sasuke tried to catch up to them.

* * *

_Naruto_

Twisting his fingers into the unfamiliar positions, Naruto struck a chord. He couldn’t hear anything wrong with it, but his teacher shook his head and re-adjusted his fingers. And so the blond-turned-redhead tried again, and again, and again.

Learning to play the guitar might be more difficult than he’d thought.

Maybe he should try the flute instead? A piano? Harmonica?

No. He’d already decided to learn the guitar first. He wouldn’t go back on his decision. The only thing to do was simply buckle down and do it.

And so, the next hour and a half were used to painstakingly watch the position of his fingers and the speed of striking the strings. He was afraid he’d snap one if he wasn’t careful. It was what had happened last time. 

Thank god for the Transformation Technique, or no guitarist in the village would be willing to teach him again. Honestly, it was just one string! How hard could that be to replace?

After the lesson was over, he knew he still had two hours before he was scheduled to dispel, so he took off in the direction of his new favorite spot within the village.

Konoha was big. The area encompassed by its walls was approximately 75 square kilometers, with about 20% of that dedicated to fields and farms. Primarily owned by the Akimichi and Nara clans. 20% was set aside for training fields. 15% was pure nature of varying size and make, places that doubled as freeroam training grounds and nice places to visit. The remaining 45% belonged to the actual city. 

By Naruto’s estimate, Konohagakure no Sato was home to about 42.500 people, 20 to 40% of which were ninja or ninja in training. There were no official numbers available to the public, so he’d had to calculate all that himself. 

That had been a _lot_ of counting, math and estimations.

Two rivers pass through the village at perfect angles from each other, one of them splitting into two about halfway through it. As such, water was easy to come by in the village, and had been since its founding.

The two rivers originally belonged to the same one, as rivers don't really split naturally this far inland. The new delta had been artificially created by the second Hokage a short distance from the wall, and a third time inside the village once it became clear more sources of water was needed.

One of these rivers was what Naruto followed out of the residential districts and into a mountainous region shadowed by the forest around it. The Naka was especially calm here. And as such, a perfect place to take a swim.

Another clone seemed to have gotten the same idea as him, as another version of himself was drifting lazily on the currents, basking in the sun and nature all around them.

Getting up to speed, Naruto jumped, crashing into the water's surface with a magnificent splash.

“Whoa! Careful there, you almost popped me!” The other him accused. Naruto just laughed, tearing off his clothes without a care for their condition. They were just chakra constructs after all, no need to be careful.

* * *

Naruto stared at the book in his hands, then to the identical copy in his clone’s hands.

His copy shook his head, showing that the interior of the book was just gibberish. The title and cover were good enough, and it had approximately the same amount of pages, but the characters within was just washed out smears of ink at best, and completely missing at worst.

Trying to keep from scowling, Naruto tried to figure out what he did wrong.

He could create constructs of nearly anything solid; clothes, weapons, even furniture. It wasn’t nearly as hardy as the original, of course. Any disturbance to its ‘image’ caused the copy to turn into smoke. And it usually didn’t return its chakra to him like his clones did. Not unless the item had been a transformed clone to begin with.

The Shadow Clone technique was _weird_. It allowed him to copy himself and anything his chakra had infused, and the quality of that copy depended on how deeply the infusion went.

There was no problem with clothes or kunai, as he carried them with him everywhere he went. But if he wanted to copy something unfamiliar, he had to slowly bathe the object in his chakra without letting his energy dissipate, then use the Shadow Clone whilst including the item with the mental image he used for the technique.

He hadn’t found a way to copy the item on its lonesome yet, unfortunately.

He’d thought to use this trick to sneak out books from the library without actually sneaking them out. But it seemed his copying ability wasn’t quite up to the task. If he infused the book with any more of his chakra, it would probably tear itself apart, burn up, or explode.

So… that’s a failure then.

On the other hand, his other experiment today had given some very promising results. Before, if his clones needed to send him information without dispelling themselves, they had to create a new copy with all their memories and then dispel that. This was a massive waste of chakra, and significantly decreased the clones’ lifespan, so he’d sought an alternative.

The solution was surprisingly simple. 

A clone is a perfect impression of the user's chakra at the moment of creation. To function they needed a constant connection to the original. As such, the original could send simple orders, messages, or impressions through that bond. It defaulted to every clone, though specifying a certain bond over others was possible with practice.

It didn’t go both ways, unfortunately. The clones didn’t get updated memories of every other clone that dispelled. Only the original did. Nor could they send impressions backwards like the original did forwards.

But the clones didn’t need to be fully formed to be dispelled. 

As one of his clones created another clone, it could stop in the middle of the process, at the point where their mind (with all their memories) had fully formed, then reconsume the chakra they hadn’t let go off yet. With the sole exceptions of the copy of their minds, which would then return to the original. Thus sending an ‘update’ of their mental state and experiences without actually disappearing themselves.

As an added bonus, the jutsu itself removed any redundant information, so he didn’t get multiple instances of the same memory crammed into his mind. This was also what allowed him to use them in combat. Because instead of having dozens (or hundreds) of memories of the same fight, he instead had only one memory of it. With the addition of having observed the same event from multiple points of view at once.

Where had this feature even come from? He certainly wasn’t consciously creating it when he activated the Shadow Clone. But neither did he create the memory transfer bond, and he only did the barest amount of work in manifesting his copy within the world to begin with. One would think a nigh perfect recreation of a person would be a complicated process, but the jutsu wasn’t difficult at all.

The jutsu only had one hand sign, and even that wasn’t something he strictly needed anymore. At Naruto’s level of mastery, hand seals only made the jutsu easier to perform.

The Shadow Clone was easy to learn, but its effects was far more complex than it seemed like originally. It contained processes he hadn’t known about despite using it for over a year, things he was just now discovering, and probably even more he had no clue about. 

But weren’t most jutsu like that? With the exception of pure chakra manipulation exercises, chakra techniques often manifested themselves with only a little help from the user. They were like really complicated bicycles; machines powered by chakra. The hand signs were useful in pointing out _which_ machine you wanted to use, but you also had to practice in order to utilize them properly. But it wasn’t actually the _user_ who did all the complicated work.

Naruto felt a shiver go down his spine.

Then who was it? How could he use jutsu at all? Where did the information come from? The tree walking exercise was fine. He understood all of it, and was actively maintaining every little part that made it work. But the Shadow Clone? Transformation? Substitution? He knew what they did, but not _how_ they did it.

Looking over his shoulder, the blond half expected to see some eldritch horror crawling up his spine, drilling into his brain.

Shaking himself out of such thoughts, he clapped himself twice on the chin. Trying to distract himself as he focused on the weak stings of the slap.

He could ask Iruka-sensei about it tomorrow.

He certainly hoped his teacher had an answer, even though he’d never even heard the topic discussed before. Surely, _someone_ had thought about this before? After all, people invented new jutsu all the time.

* * *

“Doing our jutsu for us? What are you talking about Naruto-kun?” Iruka asked, furrowing his brow in confusion.

The blond felt his stomach sink as he tried to explain the concept again. Trying to approach it from a less technical angle this time.

“Hmm? No, you’re the one doing the jutsu. It takes a lot of practice to learn each technique. The hand signs shows us how the chakra is supposed to be manipulated to use the techniques, but its our chakra that does the work.” The instructor explained. He sounded as if he was dictating from a textbook, but his eyes were less certain than they’d been just a second ago.

“But _how_ do the hand signs show us how the chakra moves?” To demonstrate, he went through all the twelve standard hand signs without any other intent in mind. 

As always, nothing happened. 

“The hand signs are just gestures we do with our hands, they shouldn’t be able to show us anything.”

Iruka blinked, looking honestly baffled for a moment. “You know, I’ve never actually thought about that. I’ll have to ask some of the other teachers. Come see me after class is over, and I’ll tell you what I find.”

But when the day was over and all the kids stormed out of the building hollering for freedom, Iruka had nothing new to report.

“It is a good question, Naruto-kun, but the other teachers all agreed that it was just the hand signs that allowed you to do the jutsu. If you practice enough, you should be able to forego them entirely. So you might say they’re a crutch more than truly necessary. A memetic device, more than anything.” The chūnin told him. Though he didn’t look very satisfied with that explanation himself. All of this were things written in the textbooks anyways.

It was an interesting idea regardless. The ‘underlying instructions’ allowed themselves to be accessed even without the proper hand seals, but you needed practice in order to achieve it. How did that work? Did your chakra just learn all the steps required by example, or did you learn to access the instructions without the use of hand seals?

Still, it didn’t look like Iruka had any answers. Naruto thanked his teacher with a respectful bow, then followed the other children outside.

It looked like he’d have to take the question up a level.

* * *

The Hokage puffed on his usual pipe as Naruto explained his quandary. Though his face didn’t move much, the old man’s eyes were twitching in a way Naruto had difficulty interpreting.

“Where do jutsu come from, huh?” Sarutobi mused, a far-off look in his eyes. “I remember the last time I was asked that question. It’s an interesting problem, though I’m afraid I don’t have the complete answer.”

Naruto blinked. Even the Hokage didn’t know?

“Ninjutsu, genjutsu, senjutsu, and even fūinjutsu all have this same underlying problem. A chakra exercise properly refined and developed is a jutsu without hand seals, but if the user attaches hand seals to that technique, it often becomes easier to use, and many times easier to teach or learn. It is as if the world itself is helping you accomplish it.” As he explained, the Hokage’s eyes gained a nostalgic sheen, though he looked more morose than happy.

“We call this phenomenon the ‘Foundations of the World’, though it isn’t restricted to just our world, as jutsu are fully usable in the summon realms. It’s one of the many things the research division has worked on since the village’s founding. Not that they’ve made much progress. Not since-” The Hokage cut himself off. It didn’t look like the old man intended to continue.

“Not since Orochimaru?” Naruto guessed, tilting his head. He knew that Jiraiya's teammate had betrayed the village a year or so after he’d been born, but he’d never gotten the full story. His godfather didn’t like talking about it.

Hiruzen smiled a little stiffly. “Yes.”

Hurrying along, the Hokage began to whistle. Sharp and clear notes rang through the air. After a moment, a small sphere of fire manifested between them.

“Utilizing chakra techniques isn’t exclusive to hand seals. Monks often use chants or group rituals to manipulate natural energy in conjunction with their own chakra. And some forty years ago, there was a tribe east of the Land of Wind that used chakra techniques by whistling. I have also read reports of songs achieving the same effect, though I’ve never seen that for myself. We use hand signs because they are easy to memorize, and an experienced practitioner can go through half a dozen seals per second.”

Gesturing to a fūinjutsu tag on the wall, Hiruzen smiled. “Seal masters use writing and art in the place of hand signs. Though, on average, seals take more time to implement. They need to carry more information, and be more precise in the information they convey, all due to the absence of direct chakra manipulation. Ninjutsu are half shaping exercises and half hand signs after all. Using ninjutsu with hand signs alone is impossible. Not so for fūinjutsu, but for the most part, seals are just written -and thus permanent and more specific- ninjutsu.”

The Third Hokage nodded to himself as he began to get into the topic. He continued by explaining the difference between sealing styles, going through the uses of non-standard hand seals and one-handed seals. Then to nonstandard ways of using jutsu in general, and their advantages and disadvantages.

As he talked, the years seemed to melt off the old man. A light began burning in his eyes the more time passed. Naruto listened intently, asking questions when he didn’t understand something, and requesting extrapolations if something was particularly interesting.

The talk lasted for over an hour, until one of Sarutobi’s secretaries interrupted them with a mountain of papers to sign and a reminder of an upcoming meeting.

Hiruzen sighed tiredly, but he looked a lot happier than Naruto had ever seen him. He bade the blond a good day, and invited him to come back another day to rescue him from his paperwork.

Perhaps what the Hokage really wanted to be was a teacher?

* * *

Now that he’d identified the problem, he could really begin to understand jutsu. Most notably, the Shadow Clone. What did it actually do? How did it do it, and could it be better modified to suit his purposes?

He’d been struggling to increase the number of clones he used. Being 8 places at once was so much more freeing than being restricted to a single location or body. And as he knew now, he had only begun to truly understand the Shadow Clone technique.

And a breakthrough did indeed come, scarcely a week later, but it wasn’t from any advanced jutsu manipulation, chakra exercises, meditation techniques, or anything fancy like that.

Nope, it was much more mundane than that. 

Purely by accident, one of his clones had fallen asleep.

It was that simple.

Once he discovered the memory transferal trick, there was no longer any need for him to switch out his clones during the day as he’d done before. Instead, he made all his initial clones at the start of the day and gave them more than enough chakra to last the full 14 hours he stayed awake.

Then the clones would use the memory transfer to send back their experiences in 1 to 2 hour intervals - the timing he settled on after days of experimentation and many headaches.

By sending their full memory without dispelling themselves, a single clone could easily last an entire day. And - when existing for so long - some of them had decided to take naps. This had led to his greatest discovery since he began his Shadow Clone Exploitation Lifestyle™.

Sleep was incredibly important for memory retention and processing. Humans _needed_ to sleep. The reason for this wasn’t fully known, but a common theory was that sleeping helped with processing memories. Which he could now confirm for himself.

In fact, this trick worked so well it actually affected his own sleeping schedule, allowing him to get more hours in the day, and thus multiplying his hours of experience much more than the increase in clone count would indicate.

Clones sleeping seemed to be almost as good for him as he himself doing so.

He’d been sleeping 10 hours every day before this discovery, and he’d been practically dead to the world for all of those. He had hated mornings, and had to drag himself up even after spending almost half the day-night cycle unconscious.

Now, not only had he increased the number of clones he could maintain at once - from 8 to 16 - he had also _halved_ his time spent asleep. Going from a solid 10 hours to 5. For his main body, anyways. 

All his clones now spent a couple hours sleeping around during the day. And he had dedicated one clone to doing nothing but sleep the entire day. That one had its own schedule - as it dispelled itself every time it awoke, and Naruto created a new one to take its place.

He no longer felt half-dead in the mornings, and he no longer had any problems keeping himself awake. A feeling that was almost foregin to him. It had been _years_ since he hadn’t been tired in one way or another. Something he now recognized as sleep deprivation.

He still got tired, of course. But he was actually a fully functional human being now, even during the mornings. Obaa-chan thought he’d been replaced by a spy when she noticed him up at 06:00.

Furthermore, because of the memory transferal technique, the information bottleneck had flipped sides.

Before, it was the clones that had trouble communicating with the original. But now, the basic impressions the original could send to the clones seemed far too limited compared to what the clones could do.

Spending hours and hours practicing, Naruto had managed to get a little better at that aspect of the technique. He could already transfer emotions and vague intentions if he concentrated, now, not only had those abilities been increased, but he’d also stumbled upon a limited perception sharing ability. If he really focused he could make the clones see, hear, and smell whatever he was feeling, though the ability was heavily dependent on how far away the clones were. How many clones he communicated with at once was irrelevant however - it was equally difficult to share his senses to fifty clones as it was to just one.

Why sense sharing and not just straight up telepathy? He had no idea. But the only way he’d been able to speak to his clones at a distance was by transmitting his hearing while he was talking.

Still, progress!

* * *

Naruto’s element was wind.

It was surprisingly easy to come to this conclusion. He could have done it by using chakra paper, but really… there was no way he was forking over that much money when there was a simpler way.

After all, all he had to do was try to use some D and C-ranked jutsu of every element and see which of them were the easiest.

None of the adults were willing to teach him any elemental jutsu however, so he found a few good hiding spots in popular training fields and had Sasuke copy them for him.

Rude? Yes. 

Borderline illegal? Probably. 

They did it anyway.

Though, for such low ranking jutsu, the Sharingan may not even have been required.

Just the hand signs, name, and intention was all that was needed to use such techniques. The Foundations took care of the rest. The Sharingan was used mostly so they didn’t mess it up or try to copy a heavily personalized technique by accident. 

Both he and Sasuke went through the techniques one by one, searching for the ones that worked best for them.

As expected, Sasuke’s element was fire. With lightning as a strong secondary. 

That was pretty much the polar opposite to Naruto who had wind as his primary and water as a weaker secondary. 

As Sasuke had seen all the jutsu performed by the Sharingan, he had managed all the jutsu he’d seen below B-rank. Though he’d probably get the harder ones down once his chakra control, nature transformation, and chakra stores were up to the task. Eidetic memory was awesome like that.

Had he ever mentioned how bullshit the Sharingan was?

Because it was. Naruto could say that with 100% accuracy. 

The blond barely got a reaction with the earth technique despite all his attempts and Sasuke’s self satisfied coaxing. The fire technique still left him coughing smoke. The lightning one he managed after hours of practice. The water jutsu - by contrast - worked after just a few minutes, and his wind technique formed successfully the third time he tried it.

Compare that to Sasuke, who managed all of them on the first try, though the fire and lightning jutsu were by far the most potent and efficient.

In the end; all they really had to do to find their elemental techniques was to try everything. Why didn’t everybody do it this way? Simply feeling which element flowed the smoothest seemed just a good an affinity indicator as some stupid paper.

* * *

_Hatake Kakashi_

Hatake Kakashi watched the betrayed expressions on the genin before him. They shouted at him; complained that the test was unfair. One even demanded another chance. As if Kakashi was in any way obligated to teach him.

Stuffing his hands in his pocket, the silver haired jōnin used a Shunshin to disappear faster than either of the three could follow.

He’d report their failure to the Hokage later, but right now there was someone he wanted to see.

A few seconds later, he stood before the memorial stone at the center of training ground 3.

His eyes zeroed in on a name. One among hundreds. He’d stared at that name so long that he could probably locate it in his sleep.

“Do you think I was too harsh?” The last of the Hatake clan asked, his left hand coming up to cradle his eye. “Their synergy wasn’t _that_ bad, certainly better than ours was at the start.”

There was no answer. There never was.

“But they failed the bell test. All 3 looked out for themselves first and foremost. Not like you, and Rin, more like I used to be.” That was the primary reason he’d failed them. They’d all reminded him of himself to a greater or lesser extent. One too ambitious - his only goal to climb in rank and earn himself a name. Another was plagued by his past, and had become cynical after one too many deaths close to him. The last was simply too selfish to truly see the value in those around her.

All three had been… _moderately_ talented, he supposed, for Academy graduates.

But skill didn’t make up for their inability to work together.

 _‘Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.’_ _Isn’t that right, Obito?_

“Kakashi-nii-san?” A young voice asked. 

Kakashi very deliberately didn’t tense.

He recognized that voice, and that chakra. It was much more muffled than it usually was, and the child had walked quietly enough that he hadn’t made a single sound. He’d come from downwind, so Kakashi wouldn’t have been able to smell him.

Almost afraid of what he’d find, the 21 year old turned around.

Sure enough; sunkissed blond hair and brilliant cerulean eyes stared at him from a face that reminded him of Kushina.

For a brief moment, Kakashi contemplated running.

Naruto was doing fine. Jiraiya had found someone to take care of him, Kakashi had seen the kid laughing and happy. There was no need for Kakashi to muck that up. He wasn’t someone that should be around young children.

But… 

Naruto had sought him out, and it wasn’t the first time he’d tried either, just the first he’d succeeded.

Kakashi couldn’t lie to himself any longer.

Naruto knew who he was. The kid would be angry at him. Rightfully so, Kakashi had abandoned him and let Minato-sensei’s kid be raised by an unrelated ninja. Jiraiya had even asked him to act as the big brother or uncle he should have been, but Kakashi… he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

And now Naruto stood before him. The reminder of his failure, of the people he would never get back. A reminder of how awful a person he was.

The blond grinned at him, a free and uninhibited expression that had no business being on the jinchūriki hated by the village. “Nazumi’s making curry today. Do you want to join us?”

Kakashi’s brain stopped for a moment, taken completely off guard.

This wasn’t what he’d expected their first proper meeting to be like at all.

Naruto’s grin grew even wider, if that was even possible. “Great! Let’s go!”

The tiny 7 year old grabbed at his right hand. And despite being a jōnin, and an ex-ANBU captain, Kakashi was helpless to resist as he was pulled along by an excitable child.

He managed some half-hearted protests, but Naruto just ignored them, continuing to pull him along.

… 

It was the best meal he’d had in years.

* * *

_Naruto_

“A trip?” Naruto asked, not sure if he’d heard correctly.

Tetsuya nodded. “Yeah, you’re an orphan right? It’s a bit problematic getting in and out of the Leaf if ya’ don’t have a travel permit. You’ve never been outside the walls, have ya’? I’ll talk with your guardian, pull some strings, let ya’ see the outside world for a week or two. What do ya’ say?”

Staring wide eyed at Tatsuya, the blond’s face broke into a wide grin. “That sounds great! Let’s go right away!”

Obaa-chan actually said yes. She’d quizzed Tetsuya quite extensively, and the old man looked almost constipated when she was done with him, but she did give her permission. Something Naruto hadn’t been sure she’d actually do. 

The terms were strict though. 6 days outside. An hour over the deadline, and she was sending ninja after them.

Naruto had no doubt she was serious.

“That’s some grandmother you’ve got there.” The tattooed merchant commented, wiping away the sweat that was still sticking to his brow.

Naruto was too excited to answer, almost vibrating in his seat. The carriage was going far too slow in his opinion, but the line was long today, so it couldn’t be helped.

In addition to Tetsuya, three other men and two women from the warehouse were coming with them. As well as quite a bit of luxury clothing and dozens of newly forged swords of different types, leftovers from a weapon shop in town that hadn’t managed to sell them here. All of it - and them - was put in the back of a carriage drawn by two pack mules.

As they reached the checkpoint, Tetsuya delivered some papers and allowed the shinobi on duty to check the back of the carriage. The guards did a double-take at Naruto’s presence, but things like that had long since stopped registering for the Uzumaki. It was more the norm than not for the natives.

The process took quite a bit of time, longer than anyone before them. Even Tetsuya seemed to be getting impatient after the 20 minute mark.

Finally a black haired chūnin came over to them. Looking right at Naruto, the guard didn’t look happy in the slightest. “Naruto Uzumaki, do you know Tetsuya Akuma and his entourage?”

Feeling his heart sink into his stomach, the blond nodded.

“I see.” The chūnin voice was completely emotionless as he looked over the form Tetsuya had delivered.

“You intend to travel with them for one week, and then return here accompanied by another group in Tetsuya’s Merchant Company. Correct?”

Naruto nodded again. Now he was really getting nervous. Tetsuya looked like it was starting to dawn on him that he may have made a mistake.

“Hmm…” The chūnin mused, looking between all the people in the carriage. Then he waved them to the side where they wouldn’t hold up the line. “Stay here for a moment. I need to consult my superiors.”

Then he vanished, using a Shunshin to disappear in a swirl of leaves.

“What the hell?” Tetsuya muttered. Looking at the shinobi who were all eyeing him like sharks smelling blood.

As they waited, Tetsuya was shifting between looking at a guilty Naruto and anxiously studying the ninja guarding the gate.

“Is there something you’re not telling me, kid?” He finally asked, a good few minutes into their wait.

Naruto shuffled, unsure of what to say. Technically, he wasn’t allowed to reveal his jinchūriki status to anyone, just like he wasn’t allowed to reveal his parentage. But in a situation like this, he kind of felt he had a responsibility to do so.

Before he could open his mouth, the chūnin from before was back. “Come with me, Uzumaki-san, Akuma-san.” That was all he said before heading to the guardhouse built into the wall.

Inside was…

“Jiji!” 

“Hokage-sama!?”

Tetsuya looked even more nervous than before. In fact, he looked a little sick. Like he’d eaten something and then discovered it was laced with poison.

The Sandaime smiled at them “Relax. I’m sorry to take up so much of your time, but I need to talk with you before anything can be decided. Naruto, could you wait outside a few minutes while I talk to Akuma-san.”

Biting his lip, the blond looked back and forth between the two old men. Funnily enough, Tetsuya was almost twice as large as the Hokage, his muscles and posture made him seem like someone half his own age. In comparison, Sarutobi was the picture of an elderly grandfather, with liver spots and wrinkles magnifying a tired face.

But there was no mistaking who held the power in this room.

Hiruzen gave off an aura that Tetsuya simply couldn’t match. The look in his eyes, while kind, also had the steel one would expect for someone who had led soldiers into war.

Finally, Naruto nodded. It didn’t look like Tetsuya was in too much trouble, and it wasn’t like he could actually refuse.

And so Naruto sat outside the captain’s office, trying to listen in on what they were saying. It was no use though, no sound escaped the room.

Finally, after almost half an hour, Tetsuya finally exited. He gave Naruto a small smile, then settled himself into another chair. The furniture creaked under his weight.

The Hokage waved him in. It was Naruto’s turn.


	5. Inside/Outside

_Naruto_

“Why do you want to go with Tetsuya-san, Naruto-kun?” The Hokage asked him. There was only curiosity in those eyes. Like the old man wouldn’t judge him either way.

Naruto shuffled in his seat. “I- I kind of wanted to see what the rest of the world was like. Konoha is… the only place I’ve ever known.”

Hiruzen nodded, steepling his fingers before him and looking like he missed his pipe. “There’s a reason for that though.”

“Because it’s dangerous.” The blond said dejectedly.

The Sandaime nodded. “Yes. As I’ve explained before, your father had a lot of enemies, and while we’re pretty sure your parentage is not known to the other villages, we can never be certain. Also, your status as the Kyuubi’s jinchūriki…” The old man trailed off. He sighed and began to root around in the desk’s drawer. He pulled out a map and spread it across the desk between them.

“This is the Land of Fire, Naruto. It has many beautiful sights, but it is far too large to be truly secure. Go anywhere outside of its borders, and you’ll be cut off from potential backup.”

Naruto stared wide-eyed at the paper. He’d seen maps of Hi no Kuni before, of course, but nothing this detailed. The altitude lines and cartological details were extremely exact. It’s color code had six different shades of red, and it had more notations than he’d ever seen on a map before. The person that made this _really_ cared about maps.

The Hokage smiled again, happier this time. “While I can’t allow you to go out with Tetsuya-san, I can get some of my shinobi to guard you as you visit any of the places on this map.”

Naruto scowled. “Babysitting?”

Hiruzen coughed, his expression just just a bit mirthful. “No. A guard detail. You can’t leave right away though. Kakashi is on a mission, and I don’t have an appropriate list of guards ready. And too many saw you head for the gate today. If you do leave, it’d have to be in secret.”

The blond sighed. He supposed it was better than nothing but… “How long can I stay out? How often can these shinobi follow me around?” Because there was no way a highly trained military operative like a high-chūnin or jōnin could be spared for long. 

This was nothing more than a gilded collar to go with his gilded cage. 

Freedom it was not.

The Hokage’s expression turned sad again. No doubt knowing exactly what the blond was thinking. “I think we can manage once a month, at least. And let’s say… three days at the longest. Can’t be in predictable intervals though. That would leave too many openings.” 

Tapping the map in thought, Hiruzen snapped his fingers. “When you become a chūnin, I’ll reevaluate the issue. Maybe Jiraiya could bring you along on his travels if you wish? There is indeed much to see in the world, but for now, I’ll have to ask you to wait. You’re not strong enough to take care of yourself, and the world is a dangerous place. Especially for you.”

Naruto nodded, dejected.

“I’ve informed Tetsuya-san of the problem, and cited the reason as your parentage only. Without saying who your parents were, of course. You are free to tell him about the Nine-Tails if you so wish, though not your father’s name.” Hiruzen told him.

Naruto nodded numbly. It wasn’t as if the Hokage actually needed to explain himself anyways.

The Sandaime sighed again. “I am sorry. Circumstances bind my hands. I hope you understand.” Then he left, disappearing in a swirl of leaves even if there were no obvious exits.

Naruto sat alone for half a minute, looking over the impressive map that was still left on the desk.

Plastering on a smile, he went out to meet Tetsuya.

The old man grimaced as he saw the blond. “Stop that brat. Such an expression doesn’t suit ya’.”

Naruto froze for a moment before he let the cheerfulness fall off his face like he’d taken off a mask, instead letting it settle into a grimace. 

He wondered if he was about to cry? It had been a while since that happened.

Tetsuya groaned, his fingers massaging his temple in the universal sign of a headache. “That could have gone better. I’m sorry for getting your hopes up.”

Naruto nodded, forcing the tears back.

The old man looked very uncomfortable as he shifted from foot to foot. “Well, I still have to return to the guys, so I guess this is goodbye for now.”

At that, Naruto really did cry. He’d been enjoying his time with Tetsuya. He was one of only two grown-ups who didn’t either scorn him or treat him like a child.

Tetsuya flinched, looking around the room desperately. 

It seemed like the gruff-looking man had no idea what to do about crying children.

Naruto sniffed, then smiled at the big man. A much more honest expression than his previous mask. “When do you come back?”

The merchant still looked apprehensive, but his answer was clear. “A year, maybe two? I’ve stayed in Konoha because we kept having problems here. Now that they’re sorted, I’ll be working directly with the rest of the guild.”

He looked like he expected another crying episode, but Naruto just nodded. 

He’d kind of guessed. Tetsuya seemed important to his company, it being named after him and all. And there hadn’t been much happening here lately. The blond was kind of surprised he’d stayed around as long as he had to be honest.

Half an hour later, Naruto saw his friend off, waving goodbye at the gates of the city he was not allowed to leave.

Then he started walking home. 

The walls of the village was suddenly much more restrictive than they had been before. He’d never thought much about the outside, not in anything but vague terms. It was merely a place he would visit ‘someday’.

But now that he’d been told he couldn’t… 

Oh, he supposed he could get those guards the Third was talking about, but that wasn’t real freedom. Just the impression of it.

Was that really how his life was going to be like?

The jinchūriki of Konohagakure, the Fourth Hokage’s son, shinobi of the Leaf. 

Didn’t he have a choice? Yes, his seal would break down some time in the future, so he’d have to deal with that. But even if that hadn’t been the case, it didn’t seem like he had more than one option. 

Certainly he could get a job on the side. Become a chef like so many Akimichi, or maybe sell flowers like the Yamanaka, but it’d have to be in Konoha.

He was imprisoned. It was a large and comfortable prison, but a prison nonetheless.

“Damn it.” Tears were starting to fall again. 

What was it Tetsuya had called him? A weapon of destruction? As the container for the Kyuubi, the moniker was even more appropriate for him than normal shinobi.

But… 

He didn’t want that.

He could fight for this place, certainly. He could fight for Konoha and his friends. He liked it well enough. The cause was just. 

Even if people weren’t very nice to him. He’d been interacting with them wearing many different faces lately, and they were generally kind. They deserved to be protected, like Jiji and Jiraiya talked about. 

Being a shinobi was an honor; to be one of the protectors of Konoha, of the entire Land of Fire… 

He wanted that. And he wanted the recognition that came with it.

But he didn’t want _just_ that. He wanted to read more books. To watch movies. To hear songs. To eat good food. To see the world. To figure out why things were the way they were. He wanted to help his friends. He wanted to find Itachi. He wanted to beat Shikamaru at shogi.

All those he could do while being a shinobi, but… then it would always be on someone else’s terms.

He wanted to _live_.

Naruto blinked as he realized where he was. Without fully registering it, he’d walked up to the massive wall separating him from the rest of the world.

It was a marvelous piece of architecture: 60 meters tall, 10 meters wide, 25 kilometers long. It’s core was built by the First Hokage using Wood Release. Then it was added to by a layer of earth and rock by use of Earth Release techniques. Ordinary wood had been layered on the outside - every layer enhanced with warding and strengthening seals.

It was probably one of the sturdiest structures in the world, far stronger and imposing than castle walls of old - a city perimeter that brushed off all but the strongest ninjutsu.

Chakra slid off its surface. The barrier that surrounds Konoha was anchored to it - made by it. The barrier detected intruders and logged everyone that entered and left.

But for all that, it shouldn’t be possible to get over it. 

The tree walking exercise was out, so he’d have to go by air.

Jumping into a nearby tree to get a bit more height. He made a clone which immediately transformed itself into a kunai.

Carefully regulating his chakra, the eight year old threw the clone-turned-knife as hard as he could. 

It sailed high above the wall, easily passing the 60 meter boundary and continuing upwards.

When it crossed the barrier, it dispelled with a faint whiff of chakra smoke.

Memories of a cleansing wave of chakra returned to him.

So he probably couldn’t go that way huh? His real body would most definitely survive, but the barrier team would be notified immediately, so that was no good.

He’d have to go through one of the three gates then? 

Or maybe he could find a way around the barrier?

Ambling his way home, Naruto began to think. 

He had a project to complete.

* * *

Naruto held his breath, praying for success.

It turned out that the cleansing effect of the barrier was very much present at the gates as well. As far as he could figure, it was there to dispel Transformation Techniques and get rid of genjutsu, which meant it was more than sufficient to dispel his clones.

Naruto hadn’t felt it the first time he’d crossed it simply because his own body’s chakra drowned the effect long before he even registered its existence, and his ability to sense external chakra was abysmal.

So no matter which way he chose - if he wanted to get out of the village, he had to get through that barrier.

He was pretty sure he had managed to create a seal that blocked chakra from outside from interfering with the inside. He wasn’t very good with seals, but such a thing was one of the simplest designs possible. It was a component for virtually any seal with even a modicum of sensitivity.

One couldn’t have paper bombs going off just because someone used a Shunshin in their general vicinity after all. 

The only real difficulty he had was to make its effect apply to the physical space inside of the circle and not the rest of the seal it was connected to.

It had taken him over a week of reading, trial and error, and forcing himself through textbooks far above him. They weren’t very good textbooks either, and the only reason he even had access to them was because Jiraiya had filled his house with the stuff.

Honestly, Naruto thought the entire art was cumbersome. Ninjutsu was easier, and it was possible to modify those on the fly to fit any situation.

He had managed it though - creating a space that should be untouched by the cleaning wave of chakra surrounding Konoha.

So now he just had to wait and-

Success! The clone was outside!

A wide grin stretched across his face.

Naruto had decided that trying to go over the walls was too noticeable. And doing so would have even more problems for him to overcome. The seal protecting his clones from the chakra pulse had to be written somewhere, and tossing them over 60 meters in the air meant they had to get back down too.

Doing that without the seal breaking, or the clone popping, was no easy task. Sneaking a seal through the gates with a transformed clone inside was more manageable.

All he had to do was find a suitable carriage, put his seal and clone out of sight for a casual inspection, and viola!

Given that his clones could transform into tiny objects able to hide within the folds of a book, that wasn’t actually very difficult.

* * *

Naruto was having the time of his life. 

Running through the forests of the Land of Fire, he couldn’t help the thrill that ran through him.

He had no destination. The goal was simply ‘to explore’. But that didn’t matter. He was outside!

For the first time in his life, he was somewhere other than Konoha.

He felt a bit guilty, perhaps. It was the first time he’d consciously disobeyed the Hokage, but he didn’t let that stop him. His life was his own, and he wanted to use it how he wished to.

Taking a break at a small river, he took a sip. Usually he wouldn’t have allowed himself such indulgence. Food and drink were really gross when the clones dispelled. But if he only drank water, then only normal water should be left, right? He couldn’t simply _not_ drink. He’d been given as much chakra as the original could put into a clone, and been told to last as long as possible. Going days without food was possible, but without water? No.

Though he doubted he could have forced himself to eat even if he had to.

Just the memory of last time…

Suppressing a shudder, he picked a direction and ran.

* * *

As he’d thought; experiencing the Land of Fire through a clone was just as exciting as doing it first-hand. It was a bit disjointed, but in the end, there was no real difference between memories experienced as himself or as a Shadow Clone.

Good thing too, or he doubted he’d have the determination to stay awake this long.

He couldn’t fall asleep.

Downing his fifth cup of coffee in two hours, Naruto tried to suppress the shivers threatening to overtake him. 

40 hours. That was the time since he’d last slept, 36 hours since the clone had left Konoha. 

He couldn’t fall asleep.

This was too important.

_He couldn’t fall asleep._

* * *

Naruto gaped at the massive ravine he’d stumbled upon. This place…

Sure enough; by following the cliff face he eventually came upon two massive statues carved into the rock.

This was the Valley of the End. The place where Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had fought their last battle. The founding fathers of Konoha - immortalized by the wound they’d carved into the earth.

Naruto gulped. Shinobi had done _this_ , as a mere _side-effect_ of their battle?

Looking around, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the _kilometers_ long ravine reaching several hundred meters down. It was wider than Konoha’s main street and spoke of a battle Naruto could barely comprehend.

This would be his final stop, he knew.

His chakra stores had been deteriorating faster and faster today. He’d noticed it before he went to sleep yesterday, but it had really begun picking up speed during the night. He didn’t think he’d have more than four or five hours before he was forced to return to the main body.

As he ran up one of stone Hashirama’s massive shoulder pads, he tried mentally poking at the effect that was causing the deterioration. As usual, he got no reaction.

He didn’t know what it was. It didn’t feel like his ‘image’ was losing any coherency. His mind and body was just as healthy as his normal body would have been given 74 hours of running without food.

Was it the original’s fault? It was frankly incredible that he’d managed to stay awake this long to begin with, but if he’d actually fallen unconscious then why wasn’t he dispelled already? No, it didn’t add up. Whatever this was, he doubted it had anything to do with the original directly.

Naruto circled the Senju’s head a few times - poking stone-Hashirama in the eye once - before jumping over to rest on the tips of the fingers forming the Seal of Confrontation.

Maybe it was the distance? It had been a while since he’d lost all contact with the original. It seemed that the perception sharing and intention broadcasting had a range limit - a line he'd passed on the second day, though the original had managed to push it a bit further after half an hour or so, meaning it might be possible to extend that with training.

But if that connection had a limit, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to assume the clones themselves did as well. No matter how much it would suck to discover that - though it did seem a bit unreasonable that they’d have unlimited range now that he thought about it.

Climbing down from the statue’s fingers with Chakra Adhesion, Naruto found a nice shadowed space within stone-Hashirama’s sleeves. 

Running his palm over the smooth artifice, he wondered how the statue had been made. Earth jutsu again? No books he’d read had mentioned it.

Looking over at Madara’s statue, Naruto felt a sudden surge of sadness. 

What would the most renowned Uchiha think of his clan’s fate? Only two members left alive. One of them having murdered all the others.

Madara Uchiha had defected from the Leaf - and his clan - during his lifetime. The story was one taught to them in the first year of the Academy. 

The tale of the village’s founding was a popular one, and despite Madara’s betrayal, he was still looked up to within the Leaf as one of their founders. 

The reason for him abandoning Konoha had been explained in great detail. Naruto had even written an assignment about the issue - having been tasked with arguing against the Uchiha’s viewpoint, and how his actions were wrong.

Madara Uchiha hadn’t believed that the village system wasn’t the true way to peace.

First now - three years after the fact - did he truly realize how biased that assignment had been. 

Madara hadn’t been wrong in his assessment. The three continent spanning wars had occurred after the two founders’ deaths proved that.

But what had Madara hoped to accomplish by leaving and then attacking the village? How could that possibly lead to any sort of peace?

Why would he want to destroy what he himself helped to create?

What did someone want to accomplish by destroying their own clan, leaving only one other member left alive?

_Itachi…_

… 

A couple hours were spent just mulling over such questions. He prodded some more at the strange deterioration inside of him, trying to gouge just where his chakra was even _going_. It couldn’t be going nowhere after all, there had to be a destination. 

Though no matter how much he looked, he couldn’t find an answer. For all he could tell, his energy was just disappearing into nothingness.

When the sun was high, beaming down at him with its relentless warmth, Naruto climbed down the statue and tried to water walk across the river to the opposite side. 

He couldn’t quite manage it. He knew the theory of the exercise, but he’d never used it himself. 

Giving up after a couple of tries, he just swam across the river. 

Stripping off his dripping jacket when he reached the other side, he watched in fascination as the piece of clothing unraveled before his eyes. There wasn’t even the vaguest hint of chakra smoke.

Shrugging at the loss of his jacket, he channeled chakra to his feet again and climbed up Madara’s statue, beginning to explore it as thoroughly as he had Hashirama’s.

An hour later, his energy reserves were all but depleted. Stifling a jawn, Naruto hoped the original wouldn’t be _too_ exhausted when he returned. Maybe he should just dismiss himself now? He had been instructed to last as long as he could, but he was clearly getting no further. 

He was almost empty on chakra. Was there any point to dragging this out?

Just as he began to consider the option, the degradation of his chakra - something that had been slowly growing stronger since he awoke - suddenly increased tremendously. 

In barely a second, it had transformed from an irritating effect that chipped away at his stores to a gaping black _void_ that threatened to swallow his entire existence.

Panicking, Naruto fought against it. He tried using chakra to stem the flow of his essence. But he couldn't stop it. It was like holding back the ocean with a wall of sand. The _void_ ate his chakra greedily and continued chipping away at his very self. 

As he dismissed himself in a hurry, he could feel a part of himself _tear away_.

* * *

Naruto jerked to a stop, his hand grasping his chest as his lungs heaved.

Simultaneously, all his clones did the same and popped - their chakra returning to him in an instant.

Naruto collapsed, landing face first in his empty apartment. Fire burned through his mind and his chakra was going haywire.

Groaning, he tried to sit up. The effort was too much, and he fell again. Something had happened. Something… He had a brief memory of panic and an all consuming _void_. What…? 

His mind felt sluggish. He could barely move. Three days without sleep and then this? He was… damn it! He couldn’t-

Still fighting it, Naruto lost consciousness.

* * *

Awakening to the pure white of a hospital ceiling was a first to Naruto. He’d never needed a hospital before.

Trying to sit up, he felt an extreme lethargy threatening to consume him. He fought to stay conscious even as he was forced to lean back in his bed.

The door opened and a nurse stuck her head in. Nodding to herself, she made a note on her clipboard. “I’ll tell them you’re awake.” She said, disappearing as quickly as she’d come.

A few minutes later an assortment of people had gathered in his room: A doctor, the Hokage, Nazumi, Shikamaru’s father, and… 

“Raya’!” Naruto exclaimed happily, slipping into the familiar way of address he’d used when he was younger. Trying to sit up again, Naruto’s body failed once more, and he merely ended up nodding enthusiastically. 

Jiraiya gave an exasperated sigh. A fond smile came over him even as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

The Hokage smiled too. “I’m sure you and Jiraiya can catch up later. For now, I’d like you to tell us what happened. You’ve been out for five days, with some rather…” Here he glimpsed over at… Shikaku, was that his name? “... exotic injuries.”

“Five days?” Naruto repeated numbly. Wasn’t that a bit extreme? What happened?

Nazumi nodded, her wrinkled hands curling around the cane she sometimes used. “I found you passed out Sunday. Today is Friday. Jiraiya came back two days ago.”

Naruto stared wide-eyed at his guardian. “What!? How did that-” He had to stop and take a deep breath. Even speaking was exhausting. Naruto couldn’t remember ever being so tired before.

Shikaku sighed. “We were hoping you could tell us that Naruto-kun. The medic-nin had some trouble diagnosing you, but the cause was eventually settled on spiritual damage. Our clan was contacted as consultants, as we have some experience with things like that. Your injury isn’t one that’s been seen before however. As far as we can tell, a part of your soul has been gouged out.”

Naruto paled at the information. Spiritual damage? Gouged out? How? What?

Seeing his reaction, the clan-head continued. “It’s nothing too serious. Comparing it to physical injuries, what you have is something akin to a cut in an arm or leg. Nothing life threatening, or irrecoverable - you should be fully healed in a month or so. It may leave a scar, if you’re unlucky, but it shouldn’t impair you long-term.”

A scar on his soul? What did that even mean?

“Naruto, we’re quite interested to find out how this happened. Care to enlighten us?” Jiraiya asked conversationally, a look on his face that promised quite a lot of ‘training sessions’, if he so much as thought about lying.

“I-” Naruto began, trying to make sense of everything. There was only one reason he could think of that could explain this.

“I was experimenting-” The sentence broke as Naruto felt his eyes droop, but with a surge of determination, he fought his way back to full wakefulness. “-with the Shadow Clone Technique.” 

Naruto cast his mind back to the last memories of his most distant clone - back there at the Valley of The End. Thankfully he doubted the location was in any way significant. As the effect had clearly increased with time and not distance. The clone had stayed in the valley for a while after all.

“I was trying to see-” Here he had to take a break from talking. God, he was tired. How was it possible to be this tired? “-how long I could make one last.” End of a sentence. Not much left now. He could sleep later. “The deterioration of the clone’s chakra-” Breathe. “-began to accelerate on the third day, and…” Pause. “ _something_ … began to happen. A sort of… _void_ tried to swallow the clone whole, but only got a part of it.”

Everyone looked surprised. Nazumi turned to glare at Jiraiya, who suddenly looked a whole lot more sheepish than before.

“Third day? How long did it last?” Shikaku asked, an unreadable expression on his face.

Naruto shook his head. “Not long after that. Half a day… longer maybe? 75, 78 hours? I don’t have... the exact number. It became difficult… to maintain around the high 60s to… the 70 hour boundary.”

The shinobi all looked at him strangely.

“Has there been _any_ record of a Shadow Clone lasting that long?” Jiraiya asked his teacher. 

Sarutobi shook his head, his eyes showing an obvious interest in what Naruto was describing.

“While I’m sure that is all well and interesting, my patient is still out of it. Though this is not my field of expertise, I will leave it to Nara-sama to complete his prognosis.” The doctor spoke up in a clipped tone. 

Naruto had to appreciate how the man could talk like that to some of the most powerful people in the village without even batting an eye.

Shikaku sighed again. He looked like he really wanted to be somewhere else right now. “Not that this is anyone’s field of expertise. Nara deals with yin-chakra and the spiritual side of the ninja arts more than most, but we’re far from masters in such things.”

Nobody paid his complaints any mind, and Naruto had to stop himself from laughing as a whispered ‘troublesome’ reached him. He really was Shikamaru’s dad, wasn’t he? It couldn’t be anyone else.

“Very well.” Shikaku studied the blond in the for a moment, then shrugged. “Keep in mind that this is mostly a guess, but it’s the best I can do in the given circumstances.”

Naruto nodded obediently. As long as it was over with quickly, he’d be happy. He was _so_ sleepy.

“Right. You’ll probably be exhausted for a while, and your chakra production will be messed up for some time. Your chakra nature may change slightly so a prejudice towards the yang spectrum grows. Don’t get too low on chakra, and don’t use the Shadow Clone before your energies are balanced again. It’ll probably take about a month.” Shikaku shrugged, looking unsure. “Come by the Nara compound for a checkup after 30 days, and we’ll see if you’ve recovered sufficiently.”

Naruto stared at the man for a moment. A _month?_ Was he seriously saying he couldn’t use the Shadow Clone for a whole month?

Were he any less exhausted than he was right now, he’d probably be protesting vehemently. In his current state however, he couldn’t quite drum up the motivation to do so.

Instead he simply nodded his assent, mumbling a faint ‘understood’.

A second later, three of the most powerful people in the country was chased out of the room by an irate doctor insisting that the blond needed to sleep.

Naruto couldn’t agree more, but he didn’t have time to say so before he lost consciousness.

* * *

Being banned from using his clones for over a month was… an experience.

Naruto had been using them for almost 2 _years_ with very few breaks. Now that he didn’t have access to them anymore, he found that he had far too much to do, and very little time to do it in. 

He had to take a month off from his job at Ichiraku Ramen, and temporarily cancel all his music lessons. And… When had he started learning how to knit exactly? He could remember going to group sessions made up by old ladies disguised as the same.

Additionally, his body felt bloated. His chakra control was all out of whack, and he couldn’t even stick a leaf to his palm without it disintegrating. He had difficulty focusing on anything for longer periods of time, and he became impatient much easier. 

He found himself doing arbitrary arithmetic in his head just to have something to do even as he ran from one end of the village to another. 

He also _had_ to run everywhere he went. Walking was torture. It took him ages to fall asleep and he barely spent more than two hours unconscious before he was up again. What would normally be a three course meal became a half-eaten sandwich.

In short, he had too much chakra. 

His body and mind was used to producing enough energy for dozens of bodies at once. Now that he was only using one, Naruto felt his chakra coils ache and overflow.

And people noticed. Kiba asked him to shower, as he apparently smelled too strongly. Shino stared at him with an unreadable expression for most of their classes. Hinata gaped at him whenever she used her eyes in his general vicinity. Ino winced every time they passed too close. And Sasuke…

“Why are you giving off so much chakra?” His friend asked the second day after Naruto’s return to the Academy.

Scratching the back of his head, Naruto shrugged. “I can’t really help it. I usually get rid of it throughout the day, but I’m on sick leave. I’m not allowed to use that jutsu.”

The Uchiha stared at him for a few seconds. Then pinched his brow in a manner disturbingly similar to his godfather. “Only you, Naruto.”

He’d tried to calm his energies by meditating and regulating his chakra production consciously, but it only helped while he was doing it. After he finished, his cells went back to their insane overproduction. Honestly, Naruto was contemplating just ignoring his orders. If for no other reason than to get rid of the ever-present itch beneath his skin. 

He could still remember the gaping _void_ in his memories though, and he had no idea what aggravating a spiritual wound may lead to, so he held off on using the Shadow Clone. 

Unfortunately, no other jutsu he knew was intensive enough to actually exhaust him - no matter how much he used them. He could do the Substitution Jutsu day in and day out, and it’d only be a momentary reprieve.

In short: Everything sucked.

The only untainted positive that came from the whole debacle was Jiraiya’s presence. 

He’d been gone for almost half a year by now, as he’d been scheduled to return before the Uchiha Massacre but got priority orders after that incident. Not that Naruto had anywhere close to the clearance to know _what_ those orders were.

But now he was back, and that allowed Naruto to ask him for advice.

* * *

“A way to use a lot of chakra?” His godfather mused, resting his brush beside the book he was currently writing.

Naruto didn’t want to know what was written there. Not after the first time he’d asked. His innocence had taken a severe blow that day.

Naruto nodded, pushing more of his energy out of his tenketsu. 

His body ached. 

When he pushed his chakra out like this, the energy was concentrated enough to be visible to the naked human eye - though only barely. It looked like faint blue smoke wafting off his body. 

“I usually use Shadow Clones to divide my chakra among many bodies. Allowing me to practice more control exercises.” That was one of the reasons at least.

Jiraiya hummed. Tapping his chin thoughtfully. “There is a jutsu that comes to mind. It was made by your father. It is both versatile and chakra intensive. It’s a bit earlier than I’d prefer, but that just means you’ll have longer to practice.”

“You mean the Rasengan?” Naruto asked, barely able to contain his excitement. 

His father was known primarily for his mastery of the Flying Thunder God Technique, but the Rasengan was probably his second most famous jutsu with summoning coming a close third.

The Sannin raised an eyebrow. “You’ve heard of it?”

Naruto scoffed. Of course he had. The public libraries may be devoid of any jutsu scrolls, but they had plenty of mentions of ninja techniques, and even more stories of Konoha’s heroes. The Yellow Flash had his own shelf in the children’s section 

“Let’s do it, old man! I’ll master the Rasengan before you can even blink!”

The white haired man grinned. “I’ll take that challenge. If you can complete it before my next return, I’ll let you sign the Summoning Contract.”

“You’re on!”

* * *

Naruto stared cross-eyed at the water balloon in his hand.

This…

This was impossible.

Oh, getting it to pop was a piece of cake. Fill it with enough chakra, and anything will break. But his task was to _rotate_ his chakra within the water in such a way that the entire surface of the balloon blew away uniformly.

How the hell was he supposed to do that?

The ball punctured before he could even start to manipulate his chakra. It was too fragile.

Naruto growled.

This was another chakra control exercise he just wasn’t suited to, wasn’t it? Would he seriously have to use the Shadow Clone Technique for the rest of his life just to retain a decent level of control? He had barely even noticed the difference when there’d been so many of him running around, but Chakra Adhesion had been surprisingly easy to learn compared to what he remembered of other control exercises, or the trouble with jutsu he’d had in his younger years. 

Was it because of his clones? He just thought his chakra control had grown.

But if he was _that_ much better at controlling his energy at 1/20 intensity, that was probably the reason.

Jiraiya sighed. Looking down at the mountain of broken water balloons. The white haired man scratched at his long mane. “Perhaps we should start with the rubber balls instead?”

* * *

The month passed quickly, much to Naruto’s surprise. He’d expected it to feel like ages before he returned to full capacity, but the time practically flew by.

Between the Academy, learning to explode rubber balls, getting his ass kicked by Sasuke, and kicking Sasuke ass in return, the month had passed before he knew it.

His spiritual wounds was healed

That also meant Jiraiya disappeared again - leaving behind only the description of how to complete the Rasengan, and various ways to go about it.

Kakashi gave him some pointers, but he didn’t have much more to say than Jiraiya did. Naruto had all the steps he needed, only the practice was left.

The moment the Nara clan pronounced him free to use the Shadow Clone again, (albeit with judicious warnings against reckless experimentation) he exploded into 30 different versions of himself.

He had so much to do and so little time. At this point, he even welcomed the nostalgic headaches. 

Apologizing to Teuchi and restarting his devotion at the holiest of temples was just the start.

He’d been missing his music lessons and his teachers, even that batty old lady with her even older piano and her two dozen cats.

Speaking of cats; Tora had been using his slowly improving shelter for getaways, and was quite happy to see him again.

A new shipment of books had been brought into the library. Books he’d (under Henge) managed to convince the librarian to buy. So now he had more exciting stuff to read.

And though the clone that reached the Valley of the End was the furthest away he’d ever gotten a clone, there had been others that had been closer to Konoha. He wanted to continue exploring his village’s surroundings.

He didn’t want to be cloneless ever again, so he sent a couple of him to figure out how to prevent spiritual damage in general and some to look into the connection between his soul and Shadow Clones in more detail. 

He didn’t expect much, but _anything_ they found would be worth its weight in gold.

Every one of his clones took on the side project of learning the Rasengan. It was something to work on when they found themselves with free time and some extra chakra. Lastly, he began the preparations for his greatest prank yet.

He was going to turn the Hokage monument into a piece of art.

But first, he needed to know how to paint.

* * *

He’d been right about the chakra control. 

When his clones were working with a fraction of his normal levels, they had no problems doing the more finicky control exercises. Both the illusory clone and illusory transformation technique was learned quickly. Though he could only use them if the body doing them had less than a certain level of chakra - otherwise the sheer amount of energy that rushed through his system would overwhelm the chakra matrix sustaining the technique.

That discovery opened up a whole new avenue to explore; genjutsu. Legitimately having _decent_ chakra control was something he’d given up on long ago, but now that he found it within his reach, he really wanted to exploit it in the ways that had been denied to him before.

The Academy taught five general genjutsu to anyone able and willing to learn them.

Those were; Transformation, Camouflage, Clone, Vestibular Disturbation, and False Surroundings.

The Camouflage Technique was technically just a well used Transformation made to imitate the surroundings from different angles, but it had a separate name and entrance into the ‘Foundation’ and so was easier to learn as a separate jutsu than just imitating it with a personalized Transformation. 

You couldn’t really move while under it, and it was mostly used when you had other - though imperfect - cover. But it was still a very useful jutsu, and he could see many uses for it during both his pranking and ninja career.

The last two were different though. The Vestibular Disturbation Technique needed fine control, but very little imagination. It targeted the inner ear of the recipient through the visual medium. Meaning the target had to see you do the hand seals for it to work.

It was effective towards people who couldn’t dispel genjutsu well and was vulnerable to dizziness. Civilians and less experienced shinobi, mostly.

The False Surroundings was definitely one of the hardest genjutsu you could learn in the Academy. Technically it was classified as a C-rank genin level technique, as it required good mental discipline, imagination, and constant upkeep. 

Its predecessor was the illusory clone technique. It was an area of effect genjutsu that altered how a certain place looked. Unlike its predecessor, it was a targeted technique, and was therefore classified fully as genjutsu and not nin/gen like the clone was. The target for the genjutsu was basically 'everyone my chakra can reach’, and it worked as long as the matrix was not disrupted.

Which… only made it useful against a group where none of them could actually dispel genjutsu. If one did, the technique immediately fell apart for everyone.

Naruto decided to learn them all, though he didn’t know how much use he’d get out of them. Time, after all, was something he had plenty of.

* * *

He gave himself a refresher on all the resources the Academy offered.

He hadn’t cared much before, as most of his time had been used trying to _skip_ school, not get more of it. But the month of virtually no activity had left him stir-crazy and overflowing with chakra. He wanted no - _needed_ \- to use it on something.

The Academy, as it turned out, offered _a_ _lot_. It was almost intimidating how much stuff and resources was available to a motivated student.

As the main ninja school Konohagakure utilized, the Academy was much larger than he’d first thought. With 7 standard classes ranging from ages 5 to 12. And 3 extra classes for those who failed to graduate from 12 to 15. The standard classes were again divided into 6 to 8 parallel groups depending on how many students there were in a year. 

Naruto’s class (4A), had about 30 students, with Iruka as the homeroom teacher. Other teachers helped out in different subjects as required.

The standard classes taken by everyone was:

Language.

Math.

Geography.

History.

Chakra Theory and Application.

Physical Conditioning.

Shurikenjutsu.

Taijutsu.

In addition to that, there were Kunoichi Classes two days a week, where the girls were taught about flower arranging, covert communications, and various other themes differing from class to class. It was the source of quite a bit of rumors from the male half of the school.

Other classes were also offered, but were entirely voluntary. Naruto hadn’t taken any of them before, but as he’d already decided to learn how to paint, the art classes taught here was as good a start as any.

The older students sometimes participated in war games overseen by the teachers. These were things like Capture the Flag or other objective-based exercises, where different teams - or entire classes in some cases - were pitted against each other.

Survival exercises happened at least twice each year from third year on up. Naruto had been through 3 of them so far, and the fourth were coming up in a couple weeks.

This was the standard curriculum, things most students knew if they were paying attention.

But the Academy was larger than that. Much larger.

For one, ‘The Academy’ he was used to was just one of the many campuses dedicated to the school. It had three other areas scattered over Konoha to supplement it and accommodate the ‘parallel’ classes.

The building Naruto went to was the main one. It was the most defended, with the best teachers, located most centrally, and directly connected to the Hokage tower - the administrative center of the village.

Naruto had been placed in the class with the most important clan kids and the most influential civilian families - be that due to wealth or politics. All in a year where it seemed the clan heads had all conspired to all have children at the same time.

He… didn’t really know what to think about that. It wasn’t an inaccurate placement he guessed, but it still kind of grated that he’d been in such a ‘privileged’ class without even knowing about it.

For another, there weren’t just the standard classes either. A large part of the third campus was dedicated to returning students and grown-ups wanting refreshers or just wishing to make use of the school’s resources.

That place was also where they taught the most advanced classes, though the frequency of them - and which subjects were covered - varied wildly depending on the availability of teachers.

The Genin Corps members also used that building if they were studious and motivated enough to try and advance up the ranks.

There were somewhere in the ballpark of 3000 students in the Academy according to his estimates.

Official numbers were classified, of course.

The Academy was truly _massive_ . It was one of, if not _the_ largest institution in Konoha after the military itself.

It made sense though. Konoha didn’t accept many shinobi it hadn’t raised itself, and to keep up with the spent lives of a military used to protect a country, numbers like these were needed.

And Konoha’s army was smaller than Kumo or Iwa’s? How many students did _they_ have?

Then again, all of these paled in comparison to civilian armies, who had been known to marshal hundreds of thousands of warriors for a single battle.

It was significantly scaled back today, but the Daimyo's army back during the Warring Clans era had been said to number over 1 million.

Shinobi were all highly trained career military though. Even the greenest of genin had at least 5 years of training behind them.

The Academy contained people from all over the Land of Fire, not just Konoha. 

A decent section of it was populated by orphans from every corner of the country, having been transferred here to be trained as highly efficient and powerful military operatives. Another chunk was from children outside the village, those whose parents wanted them to become ninja, or whom themselves desired to become one.

The largest group were just children born in Konoha though. _Most_ children who was born in the village and didn’t have a birth defect, a weak constitution, or very concerned parents, went to the Academy to train to become ninja.

Not everyone made it all the way to graduation (and those had to pay for a very steep tuition fee apparently), but amongst those that did, there was only a tiny _tiny_ minority that didn’t become shinobi.

And that minority were kids with very rich parents that had paid out the nose to give their child ninja training without actually making them work for Konoha.

It was a very exclusive group. Naruto had found 6 of them so far, among the hundreds and hundreds of students he had gone through. One of which was in his class.

The overwhelming majority of students in the Academy went on to become shinobi in Konoha’s forces. The school was paid for and built by the village, the teachers were a part of the military, and the principal was a respected war hero who had the ear of the Hokage. 

The Leaf Shinobi Academy - as was its full name - was the main source for new shinobi entering Konoha’s forces. It produced between 200 to 350 new genin each year. A tiny fraction of which got the chance to prove themselves to a jōnin and get personalized training in a three man team.

And for all that, most people in Naruto’s class were under the impression they’d entered a three man team with a jōnin captain straight after graduation…

And yes, _his_ class would at least get the chance to prove themselves. The probability of _actually_ passing the jōnin’s test was only 1 in 3, but it was all essentially up to the prospective teachers whim.

The whole system was all a lot more complicated than he’d imagined before, and he wasn’t sure he liked how it worked, but… 

He had an incredible opportunity here.

The resources of one of the best schools in the world was open to him. It’d be a shame to not take advantage of that.


	6. Growth

_Naruto_

In hindsight, 30 clones had been too much. 

It didn’t go too badly the first day, and he had quickly got back into the swing of things.

The second day was harder. The headaches had come back, though it wasn’t anything _too_ bad yet, so Naruto went down to 20 - hoping that would stave off the blowback.

It hadn’t. It _really_ hadn’t.

The third day… the third was when the consequences truly hit him. At the beginning of the day he’d woken up with a killer headache and blood on his pillow, but he hadn’t taken the hint and continued with the 20 clones from yesterday, hoping he could though it out.

Bad idea. Very, _very_ bad idea.

It was barely a few hours later that something inside his head exploded. He had begun bleeding from his nose, and the world swam in and out of focus.

He had to dispel all his clones early, and with each set of new memories fire had raced down his nerves on a level he’d never felt before. That was the day he learned what full body seizures felt like.

It was a miracle he had managed to not pass out. If he had… no.

That day had quickly become one of his worst. If it hadn’t been for his ludicrous healing factor, he was fairly certain he would have crippled himself for life or died outright.

30 clones was _definitely_ too much.

His limit, after a week or so of careful experimentation turned out to still be about 15 to 18 - depending on how many of them slept regularly, and how much time they spent on it. If he didn’t let his mind rest, his brain seemed perfectly happy melting right out of his skull.

Thankfully his soul didn’t seem to have had any problems. He had yet to experience any of the symptoms the Nara clan had warned about, which was a small miracle. Loss of motivation, listlessness, and - in the worst case - death of personality? He’d take headaches and seizures any day.

It seemed it was only his brain that couldn’t keep up. His chakra was sufficient, and grew steadily with each day. His soul had never experienced any drawbacks beyond that one time, and his body was more than capable of channeling the insane amounts of energy he used every morning when he created the clones.

It was frustrating.

The more clones he used, the more he could do. The more he experienced, the faster he grew.

It was such a basic part of Naruto’s life by now that it felt _wrong_ not to do it. He had a limited time alive on this planet, and he wanted to make the most of it. The Shadow Clone Technique was the most obvious way to maximise… well… _everything_.

He _wanted_ to use more clones. This was just one more wall to overcome.

If no other exploits in the technique existed, he would make them himself. This jutsu had endless potential, and he wouldn’t ever stop pushing its boundaries.

* * *

The first idea he had in improving his ability to handle more clones was memory modification. 

If his clones could modify the information they sent back to him - including erasing unimportant memories - that would allow their numbers to skyrocket.

The problem was that he could only think of one source for such a jutsu.

The Yamanaka clan.

He’d have to convince them to teach it to him if they had one, and if not, then enlisting their help to create the technique would be ideal.

It was a long term project either way, but the easiest way to start it came from a single act that was within easy reach.

Friendship.

“Hey Ino, did you have problems with that taijutsu move?” He smiled at his classmate.

Naruto felt horrible even approaching her like this. He was essentially trying to become her friend in order to learn her clan techniques.

The very act went against one of the pillars Konoha was founded on. If not in letter, then at least in spirit. Even if the Yamanaka eventually decided to teach him themselves, he had essentially manipulated them into doing so. Perhaps not with a false friendship, but at least one established on false premises.

But he _really_ wanted a memory modification technique.

Partly to placate his conscience, partly because he just wanted to, he decided to do the same with everyone else in class as well. 

He’d go from the enthusiastic student that sometimes pranked people into someone everyone was friends with.

There were many reasons to do such a thing. The least of which being that his class had an inordinately high concentration of clan heirs or important members. But that had been the entire reason they’d all been put together to begin with. They were all _meant_ to be friendly with each other. That was the goal of creating such a class.

He was taking school together with Konoha’s future leaders, and the village would very much prefer they were all on good terms.

So he did it.

He changed his normal behavior, approaching everyone in his class with the goal of befriending them.

There were a few snags in his plan, but they were nothing too serious.

The civilian-born children didn’t like him due to what he housed inside himself, but it wasn’t like they knew that. They only knew that their parents had told them to stay away from him. He was sure he could win them over with enough effort.

The clan kids didn’t have the same animosity the civilian born children had, but building a friendship isn’t as easy as just that. There was a lot of work ahead of him.

It would take some time, but he’d get there.

It wasn’t as if he was averse to more friends. He’d given it up for a time - content with those he had. But he was older now, and a lot smarter. He could do it if he wanted to. And while his existing friends were still great, there was nothing wrong with having more.

* * *

His fellow academy students were… a mixed bag.

It took some work getting over their initial dislike of him. Some were worse than others, but there wasn’t a single one he hadn’t been able to befriend with a bit of effort.

A common interest, a moment of kindness, a shared laugh. Children easily made friends.

As long as you could ignore their casual cruelties to you and each other, and act how they wanted you to act towards them at least.

It was not hard. Though most of it felt... _fake_.

He’d read a lot of psychology and behavior books. What he was doing now was just putting theory to practice. He wasn’t really acting like himself, but like people would want their best friend to act.

He was inspirational where needed, submissive where needed, steadfast, unsure, kind, cold, annoying, and funny. 

As long as he wasn’t encouraging bullying or anything _too_ bad, he was fine playing along with almost anything. He wasn’t doing this as himself. He was playing a role, acting on a stage none but him could see.

It was easy. He’d been playing a lot of roles lately, and practice made perfect.

He didn’t always have to play roles, thankfully - most of the kids were open and friendly enough that he could manage with only minor changes to his behavior. His high grades and willingness to help others succeed was also a great help.

Among all the children in his class, there were a few that stood out.

There were the clan kids of course, every one of them had advantages the non-clan children didn’t, even those with shinobi parents of their own.

But there were those that stood out even considering that.

Sakura Haruno, civilian born from a mid-class family. She was an anomaly for 4A, but paying closer attention to the girl, it quickly became clear why she was here.

Sakura was _smart_ . Despite being only eight years old, she was one of the smartest people in the class. Not as smart as Shikamaru, but she was a hell of a lot more motivated. That, plus her _superb_ chakra control gave her a lot of potential. 

It wouldn’t take much for her to become a highly ranked medic-nin or a great contribution to the barrier team or intelligence division.

The fact that her parents were up and coming merchants were also a plus. 

Someone had made a bet on this girl, something that seemed to be paying off seeing as she was among the top students of their class - placed fourth after Sasuke, Naruto, and Ino - and she was only second to Ino due to falling behind in the physical classes.

She was a bit shy, but she hadn’t scorned him because of his reputation, and she’d opened up quickly when he’d shown her kindness. Also, she loved books, so that was something they had in common. She dreamed of being a great kunoichi. Like many of the other girls, her idol was Senju Tsunade. 

He was lucky that she was also Ino’s best friend. Something that made it easier to convince himself he wasn’t being too manipulative with his actions.

Hinata Hyuga was also a person he hadn’t expected to like so much. Despite being one of the clan kids and being one of the people with the highest social standing in the entire village, she was a wallflower. She was shy, and introverted, and had almost no presence no matter what she was doing.

She was kinder than most, and despite being decently skilled, she had absolutely no confidence in herself.

When Naruto approached her with help the first time, she barely managed to get a word out. He kept trying however, and she eventually opened up. The sheer _joy_ she got from just a little positive reinforcement almost hurt to see. What had made the girl this way?

There were others as well. Their class was pretty flush with talent, and not just among the clans, but with the non-clan kids and the civilian-born too. It seemed 4A had also gotten some of the best students to grace the Academy in some time.

They had the new generation of Ino-Shika-Cho. Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji were all clan heirs, and their generation did not seem to disappoint. Shikamaru was ridiculously smart for an eight year old, smarter than most of their teachers, and probably Naruto too, despite the vast gulf of experience that separated them.

Ino was a prodigy. In a year where Sasuke and Naruto didn’t dominate the clan rankings, she would have been at the top of the class, and probably graduate as the ‘Rookie of the Year’.

Choji… well, he was more average than his future teammates, but he was physically stronger than either of them and loyal to a fault. He was a very kind boy, and did not lack intelligence despite many children and even some adults assuming he did due to his general demeanor and tendency to refer to Shikamaru for everything.

Then there was Sasuke…

Sasuke was… Sasuke was a _genius_ , plain and simple. He barely attended the normal classes, and he rarely paid attention when he did. But when the time for tests or competitions came, he crushed (almost) everyone with a casual ease.

He was smart and _incredibly_ motivated to better himself. He had the Sharingan to give him photographic memory, amazing genjutsu, the ability to see chakra, and read muscle movements to a level where he could imitate them with ease.

In short; Sasuke was good enough to become a genin right now, 5 years ahead of the normal graduating age, but without his father there to push for that like he’d done for Itachi, Sasuke was stuck with the rest of them.

Nobody was keen to repeat what had happened to Itachi with Sasuke, something Naruto was thankful for.

Two boys from normal shinobi families were also highly ranked, and displayed more skill and ability than most people their age.

There was Ami, another civilian born girl. She wasn’t nearly Sakura’s equal academically, but she was a lot more confident, something that led to her being one of the highest ranked kunoichi in the physical classes (after Ino and Hinata).

Kiba Inuzuka was the second in line to his family (after his older sister) and though he was both talented and powerful, he didn’t really have the attention span necessary to excel academically. He was brash and loud, much like Naruto had been when he was younger.

Shino Aburame was an odd one. Shino was third in line to the Aburame family - after his older cousin and his father. 

He placed consistently in the middle of the class rankings - though Naruto was fairly sure the boy had done that deliberately. 

With the exception of Hinata, he was probably the person that stuck out the least among the clan children - something that was highly impressive considering how the Aburame were… well… They were a clan with holes and canals bored into their flesh and bones to make room for colonies of insects.

Due to his clan’s distinctly uncommon behavior - and most people considering him and his insects ‘gross’, Shino didn’t have many friends his own age. He got along decently with Hinata, though neither were the talkative sort so they weren’t anything more than casual acquaintances.

Due to the Aburame being a noble clan, he was actually the person with the fourth highest social standing in their class, after Sasuke, Hinata and Choji. Not that any of them seemed to care about that.

Then there was Naruto himself.

The last scion of the Uzumaki clan, his situation wasn’t that different from Sasuke’s - though the Uzumaki had never been a registered clan in Konoha.

He was the son of the Fourth Hokage - though most people didn’t know that.

He was the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails - but again, a lot of people didn’t know that.

Naruto didn’t think ‘talented’ or ‘genius’ were the best ways to describe him. He would call himself intelligent - though both Sasuke, Shikamaru, and possibly Sakura surpassed him in that regard just in his class alone.

What Naruto had was an absolutely _absurd_ amount of chakra, and the bizarre luck to be taught the best jutsu in the world by his doting godfather when he was 6 years old. 

From there, he’d simply improved his ability with the Shadow Clone Technique, something that had made him… not really fit to compare to academy students.

But the point still stood. Their class was jamb packed with future political powerhouses, and potential elite ninja. The civilians was either exceptionally talented, or had influential parents. 

It was pretty obvious that this was not a coincidence.

Even their teacher, Umino Iruka, was probably one of the best and fairest teachers in the Academy. Though Konoha didn’t have official classes or training in pedagogy, Iruka excelled at it anyways. He was a born teacher: Knowledgeable, kind, understanding, yet strict and diligent.

He was also highly trusted by the Hokage. Naruto had seen him around the old man more than a few times before. 

He was also one of the most hardworking people Naruto knew. The man took upon himself far more duties than the average shinobi.

So yeah, his class was pretty special. More than any other currently in circulation.

Though they weren’t the only ones with special students.

In the class above them was another recognized ‘genius’. 

Neji Hyuga, of the branch family of the Hyuuga. He was a so-called ‘once in a generation genius’.

But then so was Sasuke, and Naruto had been called that more a few times himself.

Was it really ‘once in a generation’ if it happened so frequently?

Itachi had been considered the same, and Kakashi Hatake before him, and Minato Namikaze before him, so Naruto supposed it might have a smidgen of truth in it. It just seemed that _this_ generation had more of them than usual.

Personally, Naruto thought Shikamaru fit the bill better than all three of them. But everyone seemed to just dismiss the Nara clan from the running due to their notorious laziness.

And yes, Neji was impressive. Both motivated, talented, and intelligent, he was what many would consider a ‘born shinobi’.

_Ha ha._

It said a lot about shinobi culture that someone traumatised by the loss of their father and slavery seal put upon him was considered the ‘born shinobi’.

Naruto didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

So instead he turned his attention to the second person that had caught his interest in that class; 5A's ‘dead last’ - Rock Lee.

That boy… 

He was inspiring. 

The person with the lowest grade average in Naruto’s class was a civilian-born boy who barely drew any attention. 

He was the son of a very wealthy noble from a town a few districts over. It was pretty clear he never intended to actually become a shinobi, simply taking the class for the prestige of having taken it. The boy himself was painfully shy and insecure, almost as much as Hinata - though he didn’t have the Hyuuga heiress’ countless hours of training or her inborn talent.

He’d gotten in based solely on his family name and money, and he was clearly not fit to be there. 

Despite his disadvantages, he probably could have overcome them with enough determination. Naruto had offered him help, as had their teachers, but the boy just didn’t have the motivation to work hard enough to succeed.

Contrast that with Rock Lee.

To begin with, Naruto had no idea how the boy had even gotten accepted into the Academy. The bowled-cut civilian-born orphan couldn’t do ninjutsu or genjutsu. He could barely channel his energy at all due to a deformed chakra system. All conventional knowledge said he would _never_ be able to use the vast majority of ninja techniques. 

Despite this, Lee spent more time training - and trained harder - than anyone Naruto knew of. Save maybe Sasuke. 

And since Lee couldn’t do any of the other shinobi arts, he had dedicated himself to the single road left to him: Taijutsu. 

He trained day in and day out, staying late after the Academy closed and waking early before it began.

And in Taijutsu he was merely average. 

On top of his malformed coils, he had no special talent whatsoever - neither academically nor physically. He wasn’t _dumb_ per se, but he was far from the shaprest tool in the shed. To be honest, he had very poor prospects for anything ninja related. 

Despite this, the boy persisted.

It was so terribly sad.

Rock Lee was pretty much Naruto’s opposite. Even more than Neji; Lee’s self-declared rival.

Naruto had gotten the road paved for him before he’d even been born. He was smart and talented. His body was more strongly built than even the Akimichi. His chakra capacity at eight years old was - as far as he knew - greater than anyone in the village save the Hokage himself. 

He had physical regeneration and the genes of two elite shinobi, sharing blood with a clan that specialized in stamina and vast chakra reserves.

He was a jinchūriki, born to be Konoha’s ultimate weapon. 

It was a role he didn’t want, but one that gave him no shortage of benefits in his future career.

In terms of personal power, it was almost impossible to get better cards than Naruto had gotten.

Despite all these advantages, Naruto didn’t particularly want to be a ninja.

He wasn’t directly opposed to the idea, but the prospect had only excited him when he’d been too young to understand what a shinobi truly was.

Naruto trained, yes. He sparred with Sasuke and learned everything they taught at the Academy as a matter of course. He wanted to impress his godfather, and he didn’t want to fail the expectations placed upon him by his parents or the Third. 

But... that was all.

He didn’t train for its own sake. He had no inherent motivation that would carry him forwards. If all the external factors were removed, he probably would have walked away and become an author. Or maybe a scientist, a doctor, or something else. 

Something that didn’t involve hurting other people.

His chakra grew as a consequence of his use of Shadow Clones. And yes, that technique was one he pushed as hard as he was able, training and inventing new ways to exploit it like only the most determined ninja would. But this was more an attempt to escape shinobi life than to embrace it.

He didn’t want to kill. He didn’t want to destroy Konoha’s enemies. 

He wanted to live in peace. He wanted to live a fulfilling life. He wanted to have friends and family. 

Being a shinobi wasn’t _opposed_ to that, but it didn’t exactly help things either.

He had so much more time than everyone else, and he spent comparatively little of it actually training. Working on his projects? Yes. Trying to find new ways to use his body and chaka? Yes. But training for its own sake? He did more than the average Academy student, but that was just to keep up with Sasuke, not because he found any inherent fulfillment in becoming stronger.

“What do you see when you look at him?” A voice came from behind him. 

Naruto had to suppress the instinct to jump away. He’d sensed him coming. The man hadn’t tried to suppress his presence - but he’d still moved far too fast for Naruto to feel comfortable in his presence. 

But Maito Gai was a trusted jōnin of Konoha. Naruto shouldn’t have anything to fear from him.

Clad in the standard flack jacket and a green jumpsuit, Gai was one of the strongest shinobi Konoha had. The elite jōnin was crouched in the same bush and watched the same boy Naruto had done for days now.

Focusing on the question, Naruto pursed his lips in thought. He spent a minute debating how to answer. Possibilities ran through his mind as he tried to figure out what response he’d get if he voiced any of them.

What did he see? Inspiration? Fate? Defiance? Helplessness? A dream?

“Determination. More than most. More than I have.” He hesitated, before finishing his statement. “Also pity. It hurts to watch.”

Gai blinked at him, surprised at his answer. “Pity? Why would you see such a thing?” His voice was intense, barely low enough that Lee wouldn’t hear him. 

Naruto had a feeling Gai wasn’t used to speaking in quiet tones. 

“To strive so hard for the unachievable is laudable, but I can’t help but think it a tragedy.”

The jōnin laughed, shaking his head in time with the sound. “No, no! To grasp at the ungraspable is the essence of youth! Of Humanity! If this is a tragedy, then the whole world should cry! We live only once! What else can we do but try our hardest!?” The green-clad man got louder and louder as his speech continued, rising from his previous crouch to a full body pose - hands on hip. Though it seemed Lee was too entranced in his training to notice.

“Is that so?” Naruto wondered. Looking back at the struggling child forcing himself through yet another set of push-ups.

There was wisdom in those words. 

Naruto couldn’t help but agree with them. 

What was the point of life if he didn’t go at it with everything he had?

Naruto felt a tiny flame flicker to life within him.

If Rock Lee had decided to spend his life becoming the greatest shinobi he could be, then what should Naruto dedicate himself to? What was important enough for him to feel so strongly about it. And - perhaps more importantly - was there even a goal he couldn’t just complete within a few years?

Becoming Hokage, maybe? 

No. Not hard enough. He could see a lot of ways of doing that. 

He was the Fourth’s son after all. Despite all his disadvantages, he had even more advantages. There was a clear line he could follow to that goal. He doubted it’d be _that_ hard if he truly applied himself.

But then what? What would he do after that?

Become Daimyo? That was harder, but still doable. He just had to plunge the world into war and come out on top.

Become the most powerful person in the world?

He was already well on his way there. He’d already started learning the Rasengan and the five Nature Transformations. 

If he wasn’t a master of elemental ninjutsu before his graduation, he’d be shocked.

Combine that with his ludicrous chakra reserves, Shadow Clones, regenerative factor, the Kyuubi, and a well trained grown-ups body, and he would easily classify as an S-rank shinobi.

But what was the point of that?

Power for power’s own sake didn’t interest him. 

All his friends and family could more or less protect themselves. None of them was in an abnormal amount of danger for shinobi. The opposite actually, as Jiraiya and Kakashi were considered one of the strongest people in the world, and everybody else weren’t going out on missions at the moment.

That didn’t mean he didn’t want to protect them of course. It was just that - given his heritage, and the whole jinchūriki thing - the person most at risk of death was himself. 

If he could manage to keep Sasuke from dying to his brother, then that was really the only major threat one of his friends would face in the future - ignoring the possibility of another war.

Protecting people may be a goal, but it was a reactionary one. Not something to actively work towards.

So what did that leave him?

* * *

Naruto watched in resigned despair as Shikamaru’s pawn made it all the way to its promotion zone. It did so despite everything he’d done to prevent it.

His defensive line lay in ruins, and his king was on the ropes. At this point the situation was all but hopeless.

“Surrender?” The unfairly brilliant eight year old asked him

In response, Naruto’s eyes flew across the board, trying to find a way he could salvage this… but no, there wasn’t one. If Shikamaru played even halfway decently the blond had no way to win. No surprise attacks or great comebacks were possible.

Giving a great sigh, Naruto held out his hand.

Shikamaru smirked as the two boys shook.

“You’ve gotten better.” Shikamaru noted, looking at his pile of defeated pieces.

Naruto scoffed. “Not good enough, apparently.”

“Don’t say that. I actually had to try this time.”

Naruto narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Really?”

“Eh, at least a little.” Shikamaru shrugged, his smirk growing.

“Better luck next time Naruto. Want some?” Choji asked as he held out a bag of potato chips.

“Thank you.” Naruto said, taking a handful and tossing them into his mouth.

“I’ll beat you one day Shikamaru. I promise.” Naruto clenched his fists determinedly as he stared down at the pieces on the game board. 

He needed to become better. Would it be enough to have his Shadow Clones play against themselves? Probably not. That’d get too repetitive. They all knew the same tactics and thought the same way after all.

No, he’d have to search out a proper teacher and real opponents, then work his way upwards. 

Though even that probably wouldn’t be enough. Shikamaru’s father was probably the best shogi master in the country, and Naruto didn’t doubt Shikamaru would surpass his old man one day.

“I look forward to it.”

* * *

Naruto stared wide eyed as the rubber ball in his hand exploded. Then he puffed out of existence as the shockwave of the collapsed jutsu hit him.

Elsewhere, Naruto winced as unscheduled memories forced themselves into his mind. 

Stuff like that ruined his afternoon. 

Then he processed what those memories told him and immediately perked up.

It had taken almost two months to get to the second step of the Rasengan. He’d managed it with two hands a week ago, but that was a crutch he didn’t intend to rely on.

The third step was still eluding him, but he had at least another month before Jiraiya returned - statistically speaking, that was. The periods of his godfather’s absences had increased as Naruto grew older, so it might take a bit longer then that. Last time had been an abnormality where the old man was gone for almost half a year.

Then again, he wouldn’t put it above Jiraiya to show up tomorrow just to spite him. Though that would be a bit petty, even for the old geezer.

Should he increase the priority of learning the Rasengan? Just to make sure?

But he had so much other stuff to do! He had to prioritize.

Perhaps… perhaps learning the clarinet was unnecessary? Those things were really expensive after all. The one he was currently practicing on was second hand and repaired twice.

But he really liked that one! It went together so well with the violin and other lighter string instruments. Maybe drop the Koto then? That one only really worked standalone, but it was so beautiful! He couldn’t just _not_ learn it.

Ugh… He wanted more clones!

* * *

At some point he’d understood that he shouldn’t let people know how he was using the Shadow Clone Technique. He didn’t know when he’d first come to this conclusion, but it seemed like a good idea.

At best, it would lead to awkward questions. At worst, it would mean regulations and restrictions. Though he doubted it would get much worse than that. At least as long as Hiruzen held the hat.

People knew he was using it regularly of course, and the higher-ups knew he had been experimenting with it. But he didn’t think anyone had actually figured out just _how_ much Naruto was abusing it.

Sasuke probably had the best idea, as Naruto had told the Uchiha that he was using them for training even while he was doing other things. The blond then had to explain (repeatedly) why it would be a bad idea for Sasuke to do the same.

After Naruto explained the consequences and likelihood of a brain hemorrhage in the most graphic detail he could manage, the Uchiha finally backed off - slightly. Though the stubborn boy still used a few clones during his training Even to the point of hurting himself a couple times.

Not that Naruto was any better. Probably worse, seen from most people’s point of view.

In lieu of any easy exploits to increase his Shadow Clone count - like the first few he’d discovered - Naruto had begun training himself to tolerate more of them at once, braving the headaches until they became a constant thing.

He got more brain explosions, though they didn’t have anything on the one he’d had right after his ban was lifted. He backed off a little each time that happened, sending more clones to sleep more often, and using a few less clones for a while before he began incrementally pushing forward again.

And… it worked. It was painful, sure. But only the original had to live with the pain. 

For the clones, it subsisted only a short time after creation - faster if they chose to take a nap before they did anything.

That meant Naruto only spent a subjective fraction of his time with killer headaches, something that made it more bearable. Also, after he’d adjusted to a higher number he could actually go down to a few less clones and not experience any negative effects - something he did during the weekends to give himself some ‘time off’.

One and a half months after he’d started his ‘training’ - on his ninth birthday funnily enough - he was up to 22 clones on normal days, and 18 on weekends. Somehow he also managed to keep to his five hours of sleep for the main body. 

His general alertness and concentration had suffered drastically though.

A dubious advantage was that he got pretty good at hiding the side effects of headaches and exhaustion - even as he searched for ways to compensate. 

Coffee had become a new substance worthy of worship for the blond, just one step beneath the zenith that was ramen.

Another helpful discovery led to a technique that strengthened memories - something derived from the Shadow Clone itself - allowing him to recall any one memory with what was essentially one hundred percent accuracy.

After judicious experimentation and theorizing, he had eventually puzzled out how some of the aspects of the Shadow Clone worked.

One of the parts in the original jutsu was the automatic erasure of redundant information. 

Without that feature, it would have been really hard to fight with more than a couple clones. When the clones returned to their maker, you’d have multiple instances of the same fight in your head, which was both wasteful and distracting - therefore the technique got rid of anything it deemed ‘redundant’, and only passed on new information.

On the Mass version of the technique, this factor had been boosted to its maximum - preventing pretty much everything from being transferred - new information or not. 

The Mass Shadow Clone jutsu was a combat technique - contrasting with the normal Shadow Clone, which had originally been designed for intelligence gathering and misdirection.

With some subtle adjustments to the chakra matrix of the technique it was possible to slacken or remove this element entirely. That allowed a memory to be experienced again and again as it was created and inserted into the original’s brain repeatedly.

It was also possible for the original Naruto to use it on his lonesome - picking out specific memories was still a bit troublesome, but only for those stored in long-term memory. Those would get distorted and exaggerated, meaning he couldn’t use it to reliably retrieve information from them.

Memories approximately two hours old or younger didn’t seem to have any troubles, and it was still somewhat doable within the scope of a day. 

With this trick; Naruto could create a memory packet, send it to himself, let it be absorbed, then resend it over and over again - forcing his neurons to go through the same patterns repeatedly and making the information settle into his subconscious the same way repeated action would have allowed.

He had to be careful not to learn something wrong with that trick. Unlearning stuff was a lot harder than doing it properly the first time.

It was not an easy trick by any stretch of the imagination, especially since he hadn’t associated it with any hand signs yet - thus hadn’t carved its existence within the Foundations of the World. 

The only reason he could even attempt such a complex exercise with chakra manipulation alone was due to the insane amount of practice he’d gotten with the Shadow Clone.

* * *

Fūinjutsu: The Uzumaki clan’s big claim to fame. The decider of history. Humanity's ultimate answer to creatures far beyond them. The focus of countless masters throughout the ages.

And a really, _really_ cumbersome art.

Naruto groaned as he face-planted onto his desk. 

Gazing at the mountain of scribbled paper on his right, and the very small stack of functioning seals to his left, he couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of futility.

There were essentially two ways of making a seal. 

One was perfectly copying a previously created seal. Get one character wrong, and the whole thing had to be redone from scratch. 

Completely erasing chakra ink was hard enough that it usually wasn’t worth it. There was _some_ margin for error, but the more complicated the seal, the smaller it was. And any character with even a slight mistake would affect the quality of the seal itself.

The second way to do fūinjutsu was learning every little thing the seal did, then translate it into your own version built into a style you yourself had created. 

And if the two styles weren’t compatible? Get ready to create the most complicated, overtranslated, overdesigned mess imaginable that was half as efficient and less powerful than the original.

Creating a new sealing style was essentially the same as creating an entirely new language. It was a new branch of the ‘Foundation’, created and maintained by a single person.

This was the way true seal masters worked, and why there were so few of them. 

Sure, one could take inspiration from other ‘languages’, but every seal master had their own style out of sheer necessity.

Being an elite ninja was an exclusive enough group to begin with, to then also require a mastery of linguistics, math, science, and whatever else you wanted to use seals on?

That was a lot to ask of someone.

Fūinjutsu was really fucking hard, as it turned out.

On the positive side, if you ever got to the point of designing your own seals, the process cared little if you wrote something slightly off as long as your intentions got across properly. 

Though one should be careful of writing stuff wrong anyways, or the people copying _your_ seals would also have to copy your mistakes, or the Foundation wouldn’t recognize the technique as accurate.

That was a phenomenon Naruto was very familiar with by now. Jiraiya had made a few writing mistakes when making this seal, and it was so big that trying to copy the evil design with anything resembling efficiency was a fool's errand. 

On top of that, the seal was compressed so Naruto had to borrow Jiraiya’s sealing tools to expand it all across his wall just to be able to read it. Then he had to go backwards and forwards with a magnifying glass and recreate his godfather's haphazard scribbles perfectly on another surface. 

Once finished, he had to contract his scribbles together - something requiring chakra control _just_ within his reach - on very expensive paper. 

Why so expensive? Because he needed it to survive water and outdoors weather for extended periods of time. He needed paper that wouldn’t ruin the writing even if it got wet, and didn’t get damaged easily. 

That was quality stuff. Just a single sheet was worth more than its weight in gold. 

He thanked the Sage it weighed so little, but with how many failures he racked up, this was still costing him a pretty penny.

After he had transcribed his seal and compressed it down to a suitable size on the most expensive paper he’d ever owned, he could only hope it worked.

If not - that was money and time he was never getting back.

So far he had four successful scrolls, with two of them being made by previous clones. The current him had actually managed two successes before dispelling. Something he would have been proud of if the job hadn’t been so _mind-numbingly_ boring.

Sending another request to Memory Brand the seal into the original’s head, he was once again denied. 

The same reason as before still held true - it was too much to remember, with not enough payoff. The Memory Brand took too many mental resources to use lightly, and probably limited their permanent memory capacity as well (though who knew how large that was).

If this seal hadn’t been so important, he’d have given up ages ago. As it was however, it was just in the goldilocks zone of _not_ being important enough to Memory Brand into his head, while also being important enough to dedicate a clone (him) to make more of it.

…

What an annoying state of affairs.

And the reason he wanted more of this seal in particular? It was one of their best options in exploring the Elemental Nations.

The Jutsu Storage Seal - it was one of Jiraiya’s favored combat seals. It was used to seal away A, or even S-ranked attacks that the Sannin wanted to preserve for one reason or another - also good for blocking chakra based attacks.

Naruto wanted to use it to seal Shadow Clones.

Within this seal they were separated from the normal flow of time, so even the original being unconscious shouldn’t affect them. Not that they could be active without the original, but it would allow newly created Shadow Clones to start their existence an arbitrary amount of distance away from their creator. Then the Elemental Nations -no- the entire world, would be open for him.

* * *

Naruto twisted around eagerly as he walked, trying to take in as much as possible.

Kōza - the capital of the Land of Fire - was absolutely massive. It dwarfed Konoha in nearly every respect. 

Having more than 30 times Konohagakure’s population, it had more of… well _everything_ really. More food. More entertainment. More jobs. Just… more in general.

The only thing it really lacked was an army of shinobi and a comparison to the Hokage Monument.

It had the Daimyo’s palace, but even a building as large as that one wasn’t truly noticeable unless you got close. Even then it had a much smaller presence than a giant cliff face with faces on it.

The streets here were packed. And though there were no ninjas running around, the amount of carts, horses, and bicycles more than made up for it through sheer variety.

Once he even saw a cart driven forward by some kind of machine - the thing harking and puffing black smoke even as it pushed itself forward.

The architecture was also very different from what he was used to. 

Konoha had existed for 58 years. Traditionalist styles and new materials intermixed with experimental building procedures that had been invented for the construction of Konoha.

This capital was many centuries old in comparison. Parts of it had burned multiple times in recorded history, but the last time that had happened was over 80 years ago. This was a much older city than Konoha, and the architecture reflected this. It had a lot of low houses made with bamboo or other wood types, themed more along the line of what he was used to seeing inside clan compounds. 

There was little stone - and even less concrete - in sight, the material having just become widely available some 50 years ago.

The technology used by people was obviously different as well. Konoha had better access to all sorts of nifty gadgets. The most advanced thing he found here was a radio in a curiosity shop dedicated to nobles and other rich folks.

The price was exorbitant compared to Konoha, and it wasn’t exactly cheap back home either.

There was also a distinct lack of people jumping on roofs. 

The Daimyo’s Royal Guards should be the only ones capable of such things here, so he supposed it was to be expected. Samurai didn’t usually use their abilities for such ‘ignoble’ purposes after all. If the 12 Guardian Ninja hadn’t been disbanded a few years ago it might have been different. Then again… The 12 Guardian Ninja - the name spoke for itself. They had only ever been 12 people.

That meant Naruto couldn’t just start scaling buildings without attracting attention as he could back home. Nor did he think many of these roofs could reliably hold under the strain of him jumping on them. 

That was kind of a pain. He wanted to see as much of the city as fast as possible, and being restricted to ground level at walking speed would slow him down a lot.

Such thoughts flew out of his head when he heard the trilling notes of a performance. 

The sound pulled him closer as he carefully channeled some chakra to his ears to sharpen his hearing.

It took only a few seconds for the sound to become clear enough to make out. 

It was an orchestra.

An orchestral performance. That was an exceedingly rare event in Konoha.

A clear note rolled down the street and Naruto felt all the hairs on his neck stand on end.

Circulating his chakra, he started creating a Memory Brand. 

He couldn’t allow himself to forget this moment. A chance like this didn’t come around often.

He was too far away for any reliable conversation with the original, but he was sure he would agree. It _was_ him after all.

His feet led him outside a spectacular looking building lined with white stone and golden highlights. He quelled his disappointment as he noticed the guards stationed outside. He didn’t have the money for something so fancy. 

He could... _probably_ sneak inside, but that would be disrespectful to the artists. So instead of pushing onward, he leaned against a nearby wall and focused solely on the music.

It was magnificent.

The rhythm and harmony played perfectly against each other. New themes building upon the previous until a massive crescendo filled the air with a sound that could only be described as hallowed.

Then it cut off. A single note hanging as a sad goodbye to momentary majesty.

A single tear rolled down Naruto’s face.

There was nothing like this in Konoha. The largest performances he’d seen were small ensembles of street performers or string quartets.

The next song was a more traditionalist composition on a single Koto. Just as beautiful as the last one, though the sound image was much less dense.

And so, Naruto forgot all about his self-imposed mission and spent the rest of his time just taking in the music.

None of his other selves would object.

* * *

**Author’s Note:**

Song Naruto heard at the end: [https://youtu.be/LrQiEXOiEto](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://youtu.be/LrQiEXOiEto&sa=D&ust=1593690985887000&usg=AFQjCNHlVCyCnWJyojm3sUeVdmml9Tdwxg)

The fūinjutsu system in my story is heavily inspired by Dreaming of Sunshine’s version, as well as Type Moon’s Formelcraft.

It is essentially coding where every person designing new things has to create their own programming language that makes intuitive sense to them. Or manage to set themselves into another person's thought process to a _scary_ degree. 

Modifying seals not your own is easier, but only up to a certain point. If you really want to be a seal master, you need to create your own unique way of commanding the world.


	7. The Past. The Present. And Casinos.

_Naruto_

When he was outside the village, Naruto always used the Transformation Technique to hide his identity. 

It was the simplest method he had access to. And since his clones were just chakra constructs, the Transformation being disrupted would lead to them dispelling as well. 

That took care of the vast, _vast_ majority of nosy examiners, but there were a few that would still be able to recognize him. They were almost exclusively ninja or other chakra users, but he _did_ have two recognizable traits even as a transformed clone.

Those traits were smell and chakra.

Smell wasn’t too hard to get rid of, not for his clones anyway. All it required was the understanding that they were fully and completely chakra. They were shadow copies of the real him, not truly real themselves.

His smell was - fundamentally - just microscopic particles lingering from his passage. If those particles came from a shadow copy, then it stood to reason they were shadow copies as well. Thus they could be dispelled like any other shadow copy.

So he learned how to do that. It took a few days to get the process down, but it was nothing outrageously difficult. 

Two weeks later it had become second nature for his clones to automatically dispel anything of themselves that left their body, skin, or clothes. 

It didn’t completely remove smell as a factor of course. The particles the clones picked up since their creation still lingered. The smell of their surroundings were made of real matter, and that wasn’t as easy to get rid of.

But that was ok. His goal wasn’t to be untraceable, all he needed was to be unrecognizable as himself.

That only left his chakra.

That… that was harder. That was a _lot_ harder.

In the month he’d spent without clones, he’d learned that his chakra stood out. 

Correlating the different statements of the sensors in his class; his chakra was brighter than usual, whatever that meant. Hinata had likened it to the sun, then she’d blushed and refused to open her mouth again.

Naruto knew he had unusually potent chakra, and not just because of his furry tenant. He was an Uzumaki, and his father had been a Kage. There was no way his chakra would ever be normal. But the thing he was doing with Shadow Clones was affecting him, and people were beginning to notice.

It wasn’t just his stores of chakra that was growing. The potency of his energy was as well. 

When his chakra came into contest with another’s, it tended to sweep the opposition aside. Hinata’s Juuken blocks barely lasted 3 minutes now - compared to the half an hour they had lasted 2 years ago. That wasn’t Hinata’s fault. For everyone else, the duration of her blocks had increased, not decreased. 

Most significantly; genjutsu cast upon him tended to erode without him actually having to do anything. There were exceptions to that - such as Sasuke’s Sharingan genjutsu and illusions anchored to him with a seal, but illusions cast by his teachers and fellow students were having less and less of an effect as time passed.

His chakra was growing in a way he didn’t fully understand, but which was undeniably noticeable. This meant that sensors in Konoha would know what his chakra felt like. 

If they were to stumble across any of his clones - transformed or not - they would know it was him.

That hadn’t happened yet, thankfully. But it was only a matter of time if he continued as he was.

The normal way to avoid sensor detection was to suppress your chakra, but this was _not_ easy for Naruto. 

If his clones had low enough chakra levels he could manage decently well - at the level most chūnin learned as standard. But he preferred to keep his clones as full of energy as possible. It was only really late in the evening when they started to spend it freely.

So that meant his chakra suppression was terrible. It would probably take years to change that based off of the amount of progress he’d had so far - zilch.

Add to that; his clones were chakra constructs. They had to bleed energy just to keep existing. That chakra - however miniscule - could not be suppressed no matter how much he trained.

It wasn’t something your average ninja would pick up. Heck, it wasn’t even something your average sensor would pick up.

But an Inuzuka could smell it. A Hyuuga could see it. Kikachi bugs could sense it, and he didn’t doubt there was a plethora of other abilities that could do the same.

It _was_ possible to notice, however faint the trace was.

So if he couldn’t hide his chakra, could he convert it? Could he make it less noticeably his?

He knew medical ninjutsu could convert chakra for transfusions, but that was only a starting point. What he needed was some way to change his entire chakra signature into something unrecognizable.

And he knew of nothing that could do that.

Guess he’d have to come up with something on his own.

* * *

Naruto frowned at his burned palm. 

The scorched flesh was healing before his very eyes, but he didn’t much care about that. What he cared about was the technique he _still_ hadn’t mastered.

This part of the Rasengan was -quite literally- a pain to learn.

The worst part? It wasn’t difficult because of any inherent super complexity or misunderstandings on his part. It wasn’t difficult because there was something he didn’t get. It wasn’t difficult because he was poorly suited to it like pretty much every other chakra control exercise he’d ever tried.

The only reason Naruto couldn’t do the Rasengan was because he _just wasn’t good enough_.

He knew how to do it in theory: Gather and spin chakra within a sphere, contain the energy within a set area as you increase the power until it reaches a stable state.

The technique was never _truly_ stable, of course. The Rasengan was highly concentrated chakra looping around itself fast enough to disintegrate anything it touched. A technique like that could only hope for temporary metastability, requiring the user to maintain it. Then redirect its force away from them so it didn’t explode in their face.

And that was where his current problem came from. The technique contained so much energy that one wrong step would spell the doom for even the most robust clone. It had necessitated that his real body get personally involved with training. 

He’d begun to sneak in clones to class again, just to have the extra time needed for practice. 

Iruka wasn’t checking on him every chance he got nowadays. And for some reason - the growing potency of his chakra, his expertise with the Shadow Clone technique, or something else altogether - Iruka hadn’t fully succeeded last time he’d tried to dispel his clone. The clone had managed to maintain itself all the way to the end of class. It’s chakra matrix had been disrupted, yes, but not enough to make it totally collapse.

He couldn’t remember much about that lesson though. The clone hadn’t had any attention to spare on the instruction - instead having to focus completely on not dispersing.

So now he was here, trying to learn the A-ranked jutsu his father had created.

Spin, power, containment - spin, power containment - spin, power, containment - spin, power, containment.

The three steps of the Rasengan. 

Learning to turn his chakra in an uncountable amount of directions at once had required hundreds upon hundreds of hours of practice - to a point where he dreamed of nothing but loops upon loops within loops looping in loops. 

It was chakra twisted upon itself, compressed and harnessed into a spinning ball of super-condensed energy. 

It was a hellishly complicated exercise. Something he had to make a subconscious reflex if he ever wanted to master it. 

The power requirement had been easier than the other two. He had chakra in spades, so it hadn’t taken long before he learned to channel enough power for the technique. The half finished Rasengan left imprints in trees or on the ground. But the backlash was too much. Any clone he’d tried it with would inevitably be disrupted as physics came around to bite him in the ass.

Only the final step was left now: To compress and contain all that chakra within a perfect sphere without any deviations.

His clones were still practicing and refining the spinning technique, the first task of them all. He already knew it well enough to succeed, but it would have to become second nature sooner or later. Further mastery could only help. 

But only his main body could learn the third step with any efficiency.

Annoying. Would other high-ranking jutsu be the same?

Most of them, probably. Their destructive potential was often the reason for their rank after all.

Spinning up his chakra again, Naruto tried to force his energy to stay in place, but once the speed ratcheted up it escaped his tight control and exploded in his palm. 

Again.

Frowning, he started again, and again, and again, and again.

Three dozen tries later he switched to his left hand to allow the burns on his right to heal properly. 

He went back to using balloons after another 15 minutes of practice. It was better for visualization, but worse for seeing what he was actually doing. 

So went the eternal march for progress.

* * *

His Shadow Clones had a range limit of about 600 kilometers. That was about three times the length from Konoha to the Valley of the End.

It had taken him almost a year to figure that out. 

Getting them that far away without popping was _tricky_.

Though he could cross that distance in less than a day of running on a straight path, there were several problems with that idea.

One; his clones didn’t have enough energy to spare for that. Even if he overloaded them with as much chakra as they could possibly contain, their bodies still needed sustenance to work optimally. Something he still refused to partake in.

Second; there were no straight paths leading that far away.

To cross 600 kilometers in any direction one had to bypass thick forests, mountains, cliffs, valleys, rivers, and national borders. There was no straight path to take, and sticking to any road at all would ensure he’d do a lot of looping and turning that increased the distance traveled far too much to be practical.

Getting through terrain like that on such a time frame without food or the ability to replenish his chakra? Impossible.

At a more reasonable pace - something actually achievable - it would take him about three days to get there. 

But that was something that required him to break his own schedule - and even stretch the limit for how long a clone could exist without that _void_ consuming them.

He’d been lucky the last time. He had no wish to repeat the incident.

Despite everything working against him however, he _had_ eventually managed to reach the range limit.

The method he used involved Jiraiya’s Jutsu Seal. He did it by having one clone sprint away carrying five scrolls - essentially using a third of his current supply for this one experiment. 

The clone had run as far and as fast as he could manage until he was at the edge of dispelling from exhaustion. Then he’d released the clone within one of the seals and had it take over.

With a fresh body and full chakra stores, the new clone had taken the scrolls and continued at the same all-out sprint.

It worked. 

He’d managed to get all the way to the Land of Tea by running southward. He’d gone on a Saturday so he could afford to break his sleeping schedule the next day, but it hadn’t been necessary. He’d managed to cross the distance in 10 hours, making a respectable 60 kilometers per hour on average. 

Not bad. Extremely good considering his body was still that of a 9 year old.

He wasn’t _entirely_ certain of how far he’d gone at first, since he’d dispelled in unfamiliar territory.

He hadn’t stopped running for anything, not even to check town names or mark locations into his memory, since the main goal of the exercise was to find if there even was a limit in the first place.

He only knew the approximate distance because he’d measured how long it had taken and his own average running speed. Distance = time x speed, after all. It was the most basic of physics.

The secondary goal had been to check how far away his clones could travel, if he did indeed find a limit. Now that he knew there was one, the border could be nailed down more accurately at some later date.

The distance limit represented nothing as extreme as the time limit, thankfully. Once a clone reached it, its connection to the original simply started to break down. 

The clone became more and more scatterbrained, bordering on non-functional before it finally dispelled. Its memory had still been without any sign of degradation thankfully.

It was an experiment that cost him five very valuable sealing scrolls, but that was a price he was willing to pay for the knowledge. The last clone had made sure to destroy the scrolls once he noticed the border approaching. Even if the chance of people stumbling upon them in the middle of nowhere was miniscule, he wasn’t willing to take any chances.

That connection to his clones though… chakra resonance most probably. 

Chakra resonance didn’t have infinite range, so his current hypothesis was that this was the reason for the limit’s existence.

Chakra resonance was a nebulous and ill-understood concept, but it fundamentally boiled down to ‘like attracts like’. How that manifested and from how far away had never been properly understood. It seemed almost random, changing from person to person and from instance to instance.

There were some techniques known to use it however; like tracking seals, chakra encryption, _probably_ the Hiraishin, and the bond Inuzuka had with their canine companions.

The Shadow Clone Technique most likely relied on it as well. 

He didn’t know for certain, but the connection that allowed the original to communicate with the clones seemed to be based on the phenomena. It couldn’t be all there was - or such a connection would have existed between every individual clone - but he was fairly certain chakra resonance was the fundamental principle the connection was based on.

It seemed the ‘resonance’ limit for Naruto was about 600km, which… honestly, he had no idea if that was good or bad. 

It _sounded_ impressive, but he had nothing to compare it to. The amount of studies done on such niche aspects of chakra theory was extremely limited, and the amount he had access to was nil.

If his hypothesis was correct, that meant the clones needed a direct connection to the original to function. Maintaining themselves became impossible without it. 

So if he could find a way to boost the effects of chakra resonance, his range should grow, shouldn’t it?

But unlike the chakra conversion problem, the Rasengan, or any other challenge he’d faced recently, he had very little idea how to go about doing that.

Space-time shenanigans maybe? But again, most of those probably worked on chakra resonance to begin with. Summoning techniques might hold a clue, but again. He had no real idea. It was a place to begin looking anyways

As with so many of his other projects, it was one for the long term.

His current limit was more than large enough anyways. 

A circle with a diameter of 600km centered on Konoha encompassed the entire Land of Fire, extended through all the lesser countries bordering it, and stuck halfway into most of the major ones, with the sole exception of Water.

With a range like that, he could reach both Iwagakure, and Sunagakure. Though it wasn’t quite enough to reach Kumo. 

More important than any of those were that it allowed him full range of the ruins of Uzushio.

* * *

Naruto’s parents had died the day he’d been born.

He had no memory of them.

As far as anyone knew, he had no living blood relations on either side of his family. 

But while his father had been an orphan from the coast of Fire, his mother could trace her origins back centuries. She had been part of the Uzumaki Clan. The former leaders of a nation that no longer existed.

Re-checking his Transformation, Naruto was satisfied to find it in good shape. He was wearing his favorite alternate form right now; a redheaded boy of about fifteen years old. His features were close enough to his real ones that they could have passed for brothers. He looked like a member of the Uzumaki clan.

It was in this form that he stood upon an island that once housed the oldest shinobi village in the world. A place that existed even before Konoha’s founding. A place that had been one of its major inspirations. 

In the age of the Warring Clans, few were the families that kept to one place for long. Such a space would inevitably be discovered, and it was easier to destroy than to create. In order for Hidden Villages to be viable, one needed a way to truly defend against attackers. Not just most of the time, but _all of the time_. Against masters of chakra a single failure would spell the settlement’s doom.

Konoha had gotten around that problem by gathering so much military power that nobody could match them. Uzushio had achieved it with a mix of advantageous geography and the art the Uzumaki were best known for: Fūinjutsu.

Even now there were remnants of a barrier surrounding the place. Parts of the defences that still hadn’t broken down, even when the main wall and its creators had perished decades ago.

Naruto wasn’t a very good sensor, but with enough clones helping out he’d found a half destroyed stone tablet with inscriptions that still sizzled with chakra. 

It was a seal that siphoned off the natural energy in the air, though if it did anything but gather and disperse energy was dubious. The only thing he recognized was the kanji for ‘human’, scraped onto the edge.

That was the most exciting thing he found though. Hours of digging through rubble and exploring the island yielded nothing but more rubble and the occasional frightened rabbit. 

There were no people. Anything of value had long since been taken. The most active thing in this place was the bird population.

He didn’t know why he was drawn to the place. Some romantic notion of a master blood seal that recognized him as a long lost son? A powerful weapon that was meant to destroy all of the Uzumakis’ enemies? To find a mural depicting the truth of the world?

There was nothing.

This had been a place where his ancestors lived. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t special for what it was, just what it had been.

The sun was setting, but Naruto was just happy overlooking the ruins, trying to imagine what the place would have looked like far in the past.

“It was beautiful.”

Naruto flinched, almost falling off the boulder he’d been sitting on. Turning around, the momentary redhead studied the newcomer warily.

It was an old man with snow white hair halfway covered by a red bandana. His eyes danced with emotions Naruto couldn’t even begin to describe.

“I don’t think I know you.” The boy began, scanning the interloper from head to toe. 

He’d arrived without any tells of his presence, even if Naruto hadn’t put up dedicated sentries, there were a lot of him on the island. That none of him had seen the man arrive was suspect.

“Ah, where are my manners? My full name is supposed to be a secret, but I guess I can make an exception for you. It’s Shinnō. Shinnō Uzumaki.”

Naruto’s eyes widened.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Naruto Uzumaki. It’s not often I come across another of my clan like this.” The old man winked, a playful gesture that showed that; yes, he really knew who he was.

Naruto sputtered. Looking around at the ruins surrounding them. 

He sighed, dismissing his Transformation. “How did you know? Was it my chakra? I’ve never met you before though.”

Shinnō laughed, it was loud and booming, his eyes crinkling just like Jiraiya’s did when he was amused.

“Yes. The Uzumaki cultured many talents, one of which was a potent sensor technique. I’m not as good with it as those born with the skill instinctively achieved, but I’ve had a long time to practice.” He turned around, waving for Naruto to follow him. “I set up a camp up ahead, there’s some stew ready if you want some.”

Naruto grimaced as his stomach rumbled. 

It had been almost a day since the last time he ate. He was a clone, so he wasn’t supposed to eat, but… it’d be suspicious if he didn’t. 

Decision made, the blond followed his newly discovered relative.

They hadn’t walked long before a slight shimmer enveloped the world, and suddenly he could see a fully decked out campsite before them. It was complete with a modest tent, a cosy fire, and a bubbling cauldron.

Looking behind him with amazement, he sent a limited memory packet back to the original - consisting mostly of a single question. That was quickly followed by the original confirming that none of the other clones could see them anymore.

“This… this isn’t a genjutsu, is it?” He asked. Sticking one arm out of the boundary, he waved it around whimsically.

“Hmm?” Shinnō hummed, stroking his beard as he looked around them. “No. I guess not. This would be better quantified as a ninjutsu I think. But such labels are just generalizations, you shouldn’t worry too much about them.”

Measuring up a generous amount of stew, he handed one bowl to Naruto as he sat down with his own. Seeing that the blond was still curious, the old man smiled and showed a glowing seal hidden beneath a tent flap.

Naruto studied it curiously, but Shinnō let the cloth fall back down before he could get a good look. “Such things can wait. I’m more curious as to how you managed to sneak out of Konoha entirely on your lonesome. And eat your stew. It’ll grow cold at this rate.”

Following his instructions, Naruto couldn’t help but sigh appreciatively as the food filled his starving body. This was going to be a mess later, but for now he couldn’t be happier. “Well…” Naruto began, considering how he was going to spin this. “I left a Shadow Clone to take my place. Jiji insists I go everywhere under guard, and… It didn’t feel right for this place.”

Shinnō hummed, slurping down his stew with enough noise to wake the dead. “Well, I can’t say he’s wrong to insist on that. But I guess you’re the kind of person that prefers freedom over safety?”

Naruto didn’t say anything. He’d never really considered that before. His situation wasn’t really applicable either way.

“Right.” Shinnō nodded, as if he’d already gotten an answer. “So, what did Kushina’s son expect to find here?”

Naruto blinked. “You knew my mother?”

“Knew her? No. I wouldn’t say that. I saw her around from time to time, but after Mito-sama died…” He shrugged, skirting secrets that weren't supposed to be talked about. “She may have been adventurous, but never to the same reckless degree that you are. And after her boyfriend became Hokage, well…” The old man laughed. “I figured it was best to stay away.”

Naruto frowned. He knew his parentage? Not many did. But beyond that: “Why?” It sounded almost like… 

“Why indeed. I don’t particularly like Konoha, you see.” The air around the old man transformed into something that wasn’t quite killing intent. But more… manifested rage.

Naruto was silent for a moment, studying the ruins around him. “How old are you?”

Shinnō's face shifted quickly from rage to surprise to an approving smile. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Got that from your father, I suppose.”

Naruto shrugged. Jiraiya thought so, but there were a lot of people smarter than him. 

He just had a lot more experience than everyone thought he did.

“It is as you thought. I was here when Whirlpool fell. When Konoha broke their vow, and my- _our_ family was slaughtered.” The weight of that statement hung over the campsite.

What could he even say to that?

“Broke their vow?” Naruto’s voice was quiet, nearly inaudible.

Shinnō heard it anyways, a dark look crossing his face. “Yes. The siege lasted for two days. For almost 48 hours, we held out against the combined might of Iwa, Suna and three lesser villages. Two of them no longer exist, but they were strong during the second war. The force comprised over 6000 shinobi. We were outnumbered 4 to 1.”

A sharp expression revealed a set of gleaming teeth in what might be taken as a smile. The old man looked a lot less kind now. “The island of Uzushio was not taken lightly. Only a tenth of the invading force walked away from that battle, and none were uninjured. The Uzumaki clan went out with a spectacle unmatched. We went out in blood, glory, and _alone_ . Our greatest ally never came. Despite numerous requests, the only thing Konoha gave us was empty reassurances and requests to hold out a _little longer_.” The old man spat the words, his gestures becoming more agitated as he continued the story.

“Konoha was afraid, you see. Such an alliance was unprecedented. They feared we’d lose even if they backed us. And so, in making sure they’d be able to overwhelm the enemy, they delayed. They ‘gathered their forces’, so they could be sure of victory. Every second paid for in the blood of the Uzumaki, and when they were finally ready. It was too late.” Shinnō took a deep breath as he forcibly calmed himself down. A sad smile emerging on a tired face. “And so we were abandoned, and Konoha showed themselves as cowards and oathbreakers.”

Naruto swallowed. That wasn’t the story he’d read about. But… Shinnō wasn’t lying. Every word out of his mouth was the honest truth, and Naruto couldn’t read books like he could people.

“Konoha shinobi honour Whirlpool by carrying their mark on their uniforms.” The words were almost involuntary. Regurgitated from a textbook.

Shinnō scoffed. “A sign of their hypocrisy. No. The Uzumaki had no allies in the end. The symbol Konoha wears is nothing but window dressing, one of the countless lies that has made itself a part of that village’s identity.”

Naruto had no counter to that. Shinnō believed what he was saying. That aura of rage -of _hate_ \- was unmistakable.

The silence stretched between them, before the elder coughed awkwardly. “So, I’m guessing you’re going back to the Leaf later?”

Naruto nodded numbly. He had the stray thought that his clansman might try to kidnap him and use him as a weapon against Konoha, to get his revenge on the people he so despised. But… that was a tad cliché, wasn't it? Sounded like the plot to a manga or something.

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention me to your Hokage, or anyone else for that matter. As I said, I’m not particularly fond of that place. And my name is supposed to be a secret. If someone asks, tell them you met Doctor Shinnō when you were… literally anywhere but here.” He coughed in embarrassment, a dusting of red spreading over the old man’s cheeks.

Naruto nodded again. Wondering about the ‘doctor’ moniker.

“Are there any others? Uzumaki, I mean.” The blond asked, trying to move on to a more comfortable topic.

The elder hummed, stroking his beard again. His previous rage had all but disappeared.

Naruto could almost believe he’d imagined it.

“Some. We’re scattered all over. Most I’ve met don't even know their own lineage. A lot of the refugees concealed their names, even from their own children. The prosecution didn’t stop with just Uzu’s destruction you see.” The old man sneered again, the bitter anger within him surfacing once more. 

“Why did it happen?” Naruto couldn’t help but ask. He’d read about it, of course. But he’d just gotten a reminder of how inadequate those sources could be.

“Fear, jealousy, greed.” The elder shrugged. “There were micropolitical reasons for it, but it all boiled down to those three in the end. Fūinjutsu is not restricted by blood like Kekkei Genkai, and we were the best there was at it. Not that they got any out of us. Those idiots burned the treasures they came to take.”

The boy hummed. If he’d been a normal nine year old, he’d have no idea what ‘micropolitical’ even meant. He wondered if Shinnō had internalized who he was speaking to.

“You said you’re a doctor.” Naruto began again, slurping up the last of his stew. Damn. He’d eaten three bowls already? He’d barely noticed. The blond suppressed a shudder as he thought about what would happen once he finally dispelled. Maybe if he… buried himself alive or something? That should take care of the mess easily enough.

Shinnō nodded, flipping open his jacket to show off an impressive collection of medical instruments and storage seals drawn on the inside of his coat.

“Could you teach me?” The boy asked.

The elder blinked. “How to be a doctor or a shinobi?”

“Doctor. And… fūinjutsu?” The last word was barely more than a whisper.

The elder Uzumaki blinked, his eyes widened before a grin slowly spread across his face. “Sure. I’ll teach you. My fighting days are long over, but healing is something I’ll never give up. And… as an Uzumaki, how could I say no to teaching you your birthright?”

Naruto grinned. He stood up and bowed formally. “I’ll be in your care then, master.”

Shinnō laughed again. “That’s all well and good. But how’d we deal with your living situation? I refuse to take one step inside your village, and you can’t just run away whenever you want…” His words faded out as he began sketching seal designs on the ground, mumbling about schedules and summoning contracts.

“Ah… About that…” Naruto stammered. It was fine, right? He wasn’t revealing too much, was he?

“Hmm?”

“I kind of lied earlier. I didn’t actually leave a Shadow Clone in the village. _I_ am the clone. I’ll just send out another one when ‘I’ run out of chakra.”

Shinnō stared at him. He blinked a few times, clearly trying to process what had just been said.

Naruto began to fidget. He hoped Shinnō wouldn’t be insulted. 

He needn’t have worried. The old man burst out laughing seconds later, and this time he didn’t stop. The sound was completely consumed by the privacy ward, but it was still louder than any laugh Naruto had heard in some time. He was afraid he’d pop just from how much his ears were ringing.

“I’ll have to be careful with you! Very well then, from this moment on, I declare you my apprentice!”

* * *

_Jiraiya_

Jiraiya stared wide-eyed at the spinning ball of chakra in Naruto’s palm. 

His gaze flitted between the jutsu and the face of his godson in pure disbelief.

The complete Rasengan was spinning within a palm that had scorch marks all over it. On someone with Naruto’s regenerative abilities, that said a lot.

9 years old. Using an A-ranked technique. And not just a technique that qualified solely for its absurd chakra cost, like the Mass Shadow Clone. This was the _Rasengan_ , a jutsu that could be considered the pinnacle of shape transformation.

He only knew of three people that had managed a similar feat. Orochimaru, Kakashi, and Itachi. For all his genius, Minato had never been as quick to reach for the flashy techniques as his fellow prodigies, focusing instead on the basics and a complete mastery over tactics.

Naruto’s father had been 12 by the time he learned his first A-ranked jutsu. He’d only learned it in an afternoon in order to impress Kushina and Minato had never used it again, but the comparison was still apt.

Even the other child prodigies hadn’t managed such a demanding technique _this_ young. Orochimaru was the only one that had Naruto technically beat (if, again, you didn’t count the Mass Shadow Clone), and that had been a collaboration jutsu with their sensei.

Sure, Naruto could only form the full Rasengan with the help of one of his clones, but that didn’t lessen his achievement by much. Even if you discounted the immense amounts of chakra such a thing required it was still just Naruto performing the jutsu.

“So…” The blond said, panting heavily with a massive grin on his face. The clone popped away, no longer needed. “Do I get to sign the scroll now?”

Jiraiya blinked a few more times, trying to convince his brain that; _yes,_ _this was actually happening._

* * *

_Naruto_

The elder toad looked into Naruto’s eyes with a scrutinizing expression. His brows furrowed in concentration.

“So you’re Minato-chan’s tadpole, are ya’?” The toad asked, poking him in the ribs as he waddled around him.

“And you’re Fukasaku-sama, one of the greatest Sages within the toad clan.” Naruto answered, bowing politely.

Fukasaku blinked. “Well ya’ certainly inherited Minato-chan’s charm, that’s for sure.”

Looking over at his white haired godfather, the bearded toad gave a thumbs up.

“I approve of tha’ boy! He can sign our contract.” Then he disappeared in a cloud of smoke, dismissing his own summons.

Jiraiya beamed at Naruto before pointing to the massive scroll laying open on the ground behind him.

Pricking his finger on a kunai, Naruto wrote his name in blood on the next open section - right beneath his father’s. His wound healed before he was finished, so he had to cut himself again to reopen it.

Covering his palm in blood, he left the imprint of his hand beside his signature.

He didn’t feel any different when he finished, but Jiraiya seemed satisfied.

“Right. Now it’s time for practice!”

Naruto nodded determinedly and went through the hand signs Jiraiya showed him. That - plus chakra, and another drop of blood - was enough to meet the requirements for a summoning.

The result was…

A tadpole.

It flapped uselessly on the ground for a moment before dispelling itself.

“I… guess you need to practice?” Jiraiya snorted, trying to keep in his laughter as Naruto hung his head.

* * *

The caravan was packing up, and Naruto had no idea what to do. 

He’d tracked them down to this place, but now what? Should he just jump down and introduce himself?

Should he present himself with his real name or come in disguise? He’d kind of gotten attached to the shape he was in right now - the redheaded ‘Uzumaki’ boy that he’d met Shinnō as. He’d fleshed him out with more detail than was probably necessary. Enough detail that it was actually a bit embarrassing.

He’d even found a name to call himself; Menma. According to Jiraiya, it had been one of the names his parents had debated before they’d settled on the one from Jiraiya’s first book. 

To be honest, Naruto didn’t feel very much like that character, so perhaps Menma fit him better? 

No. That was wrong. It was the person that made the name, not the other way around.

Settling on a course of action, ‘Menma’ retreated down the road to a point where no one should be able to spot him, then he started walking at a normal civilian pace. His expression, body language, and clothes were unremarkable. With the exception of his vivid red hair, he was utterly forgettable.

Then he ‘stumbled’ on the still organizing merchants. 

Acting the part of a pleasantly surprised civilian came easily. He’d been doing a lot of acting lately. This was one of his more common roles.

“Do any of you know someone named…” He looked down, pretending to check the writing on his envelope, “Tetsuya Akuma.” 

The guy he was talking to nodded enthusiastically, and sent him to one of the busier sections of the camp. There was the old man, directing people and animals with strict efficiency.

Menma waited for a lull in the traffic before he introduced himself. “Excuse me, Tetsuya-san. I have a letter from one Naruto Uzumaki.” 

Raising an eyebrow, the massive man reached out to grab it, but Menma danced out of range. 

Giving the intimidating man his best smile, he held out his other hand. “I bought this off a poor chap back in Owase for 80 Ryo, with a guy like you on the receiving end, I figured I’d recoup my investment.”

The bald man twitched and scowled in irritation, muttering something about ‘real curriers’. Then he tossed over six coins worth a 100 Ryo together.

Menma caught four, but fumbled the last two before bending to pick them up. He made a show of inspecting them, just to stir up the old man some more. Looking up, he saw that Tetsuya was looking pretty fierce by now.

Giving an unapologetic grin, the youngster handed over the letter.

Tearing up the envelope with more force necessary, Tetsuya’s eyes flickered to the paper. Then he scowled even harder. Not unexpected, considering only a single word was written on it.

Then Menma made a single hand seal and became Naruto again.

Tetsuya’s eyes widened, his face slackening with shock.

The blond grinned like the cat that caught the canary, did a little twirl, and repeated the word in the letter. “Surprise!”

Tetsuya sputtered, lost for words for almost fifteen seconds before he regained his composure. “What the hell brat! You’re not supposed to be here! Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ll be in if the Leaf figures out where you are?”

Naruto’s expression became even more mischievous. “Ah! But they won’t find out. Because I’m still in Konoha. I’m just also here.”

Tetsuya blinked. “What?”

Forming the cross seal - if only to declare he was doing a jutsu - he formed another clone. A clone that promptly stabbed its creator with a kunai, making him burst into smoke.

It was a major waste of chakra, but it was worth it for the shocked expression on the merchant’s face.

“Ninja tricks.” Naruto ‘explained’, creating a half ram seal for emphasis.

“You-!?”

Naruto shrugged and popped back into his ‘Menma’ form. “So yeah, I’m just a projected clone. I’ll last for the rest of the day, or until my shape is disrupted. So… you need any help?”

The old man began to shake. 

For a moment, Naruto thought he’d messed up. But then Tetsuya roared with laughter. “Man, they told me you were good at pranks, but I thought I’d dodged the bullet!”

Menma grinned, dismissing the genjutsu he’d laid over the two of them. None but Tetsuya had seen his real form, and he preferred to keep it that way.

“Very funny. I’ll have my money back now.” The old man demanded, his massive hand pressing ‘comfortingly’ on Menma’s shoulder. 

The youngster just poked his tongue out at him.

He’d already gotten those coins well out of dodge. Tetsuya was a greedy man. There was no need to take any chances.

* * *

The introduction had gone as well Naruto could have hoped. Tetsuya accepted ‘Menma’ into his guild with just some basic Q and A about how reliable his clones were. 

In fact, he was strangely enthusiastic about the whole thing. Naruto had expected he’d have to prove his worth over several weeks, perhaps months, but the large man invited his alter ego pretty much immediately when he’d declared his intention to stay.

The logistics of a constant presence outside Konoha was a bit troublesome, but thanks to Jiraiya’s Jutsu Seal - and how much he’d managed to compress it lately - he could manage it. One scroll was capable of holding up to 5 clones at once now, though he similarly had to write the seal _correctectly_ five times in a row. Something that was still a royal pain to do.

An active clone could seal itself into the scroll to avoid dispelling when the original body slept, and so a clone would be able to last more than his one day limit if they’d been given enough chakra.

The scroll needed an infusion of chakra from the outside to release his clones, but this was solved with Tetsuya’s cooperation.

The old man would let a single drop of blood on the scroll at dawn every day. Since Naruto already had a very strict sleeping schedule, all he had to do was keep to it and a clone wouldn’t be wasted.

It would have been more convenient if he could modify Jiraiya’s seal with a timer, but he could barely make heads and tails of what it did. To modify it would take a lot of studying and more experience with fūinjutsu.

Maybe he could just ask Shinnō for help? But no… Jiraiya had lent the seal to him only after hours of begging and pleading - badgering in other words. Naruto had promised not to let it out of his sight. 

As he was using copies, and not the original, it might not have broken the letter of his promise, but it certainly broke the spirit of it. Jiraiya didn’t want the design to fall into anyone else’s hands. That he even trusted Naruto with it was a huge honor.

So no, he couldn’t show it to Shinnō - a seal master unaffiliated and vaguely hostile to Konoha. Even if Naruto trusted his fellow clansman, this wasn’t his secret to share.

* * *

Naruto’s financial issues had been growing for a while now. There were a lot of things he wanted, and most of them required money in varying amounts.

He got some pocket change from Jiraiya (through Nozomi), enough to buy lunch, snacks and some personal stuff when he wanted. But it wasn’t very much in the grand scheme of things.

He earned more from his assistant job at Ichiraku’s, but he’d joined that family business knowing Teuchi didn’t get enough income to pay him appropriately. He’d done it because he wanted to learn to cook like Teuchi, and because the old chef was one of the few people that welcomed him unreservedly despite knowing what Naruto held within himself.

To mitigate some of the problem, his clones had gotten a couple jobs outside the village. Jobs he would never have taken if he had to work there in person and not just have the clones do it all.

Not that he had many other options. Without a past, or an ID, or any other reference to an identity, education, or experience, nobody would trust him. The only reason he’d managed to grab the positions as a lumberjack and a quarry worker was because both places was in need of extra muscle, and the overseers were greedy and not as diligent as they should be.

And since he had no identity, he had to take a very reduced pay to work there - basically bribing his employers. Due to this, his pay was reduced to a point where it would be nigh-unlivable if he had to use that salary to provide for himself.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to do that. He ate a lot for a single person, since he burned more calories in a day than most people. But he paid for practically none of that. Jiraiya was the one paying for his food budget, as well as his and Nazumi’s house, and all his other living expenses. Like most children Naruto didn’t really have to pay money to live, which was great, but it didn’t change the fact that he still wanted more… well, _stuff_.

The point was that his clones were incredibly cheap. They required nothing but chakra, and so their work was easy to discard in a cost/benefit analysis. To earn anything through clone labor was always a positive.

His fourth working clone -the most profitable by far- was the one that stayed at Tetsuya’s side. The salary he got from helping the old man was nowhere near what a similar shinobi mission would have paid, and substantially less than any of the professional traders earned. But that was to be expected - he’d sold his help for cheap there too. He’d done it for the experience and the opportunity to learn, not money. Plus, spending time with a friend was always welcome. 

Thus he had four jobs, all of which gave substandard pay compared to a normal position, but together added up to a comfortable sum.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to buy the instruments, ninja tools, paper, ink, scrolls, books, trinkets and all the other stuff he wanted.

It wasn’t enough to pay for all the classes Naruto wanted to attend, or the teachers he wanted to get lessons from.

It wasn’t enough to go to all the concerts, theaters, or other entertainment venues he was interested in.

In short, he didn’t have nearly as much money as he wanted. Then again, most people didn’t. All his essentials were provided for him, and he was in no danger of financial collapse.

But he still wanted more.

And he found a way of getting it.

A fantastical method that was almost too good to be true. A method he had discovered completely by accident. It was something that _should not work_ , but somehow did anyway.

More on a whim than anything, one of his clones had entered a contest when visiting the infamous gambling halls in Tanzaku Gai.

It was something he hadn’t tried yet. Playing games? Yes. Gambling? No.

But as it turned out...

Naruto was lucky.

Naruto was _really_ lucky.

He was consistently drawing the best possible cards in poker. Slot machines threw jackpots at him once every hour or so. Roulette wheels had a much higher chance of landing on whatever number he called out. 

No matter which game it was, Naruto was outrageously lucky. Even the people trying to cheat often failed against him because they couldn’t cheat as well as Naruto won naturally.

It was…

It was crazy. Impossible. Probability didn’t work like that. The world shouldn’t function like that.

Except, apparently, it did.

He had no idea where it came from, but it was consistent in every game of chance he tried. On average he had about fourteen or fifteen times the chance of winning compared to everyone else, though that number increased when more people entered the game.

After confirming it with his own eyes, repeatedly, he couldn’t very well deny what was right in front of him.

Naruto Uzumaki had supernatural luck.

He hadn’t even known that was a thing.

It didn’t work if he was just throwing dice for himself trying to get a specific number, only when something was at stake for him personally. 

Couple this with his skills as a shinobi in training, and he could clean house faster than anyone.

The entire experience would have earned him about 100,000 Ryo the first time he played, if he hadn’t overstayed his welcome and gotten all his winnings confiscated. 

Then he was thrown out of the casino and barred from ever playing again.

It didn’t matter. He’d been under a Transformation the entire time, and nobody knew who he was anyways. The revelation about his ungodly luck was more than worth such a minor inconvenience.

He decided to go at it slowly; to read up on casino and gambling rules, to not play anything high stakes often, to avoid attention as much as possible.

It wouldn’t give him any huge payouts immediately, but he’d earn more money in the long run.

* * *

**Author’s Notes:**

There was a fic I read long ago that had Shinnō as an Uzumaki. I think it was ‘Naruto in Konoha ANBU’. That simple twist did so much with his character and it has so much potential, so I’m using it here.

Also; In this fic, the Land of Fire is about the same size as Ireland.


	8. Complications

_Naruto_

One of the most important projects on Naruto’s list right now was the chakra conversion trick. 

The fact that any sensor from Konoha could potentially recognize his clones on sight (or chakra sense rather) was a serious problem.

He didn’t want to be discovered when he was outside the village. And since most shinobi had at least a basic metaphysical sense of those standing right in front of them, it was also something he needed if he wanted to interact with other ninja while ensuring his anonymity.

He’d theorized that the first step was the Chakra Transfusion Technique - normally used in medical ninjutsu to help critically chakra exhausted patients get a quick infusion of energy. 

One couldn’t use this technique to refill the chakra stores of others indefinitely, not unless the user had perfect mastery of it and had perfect chakra control on top of that.

The cause for that was the entire reason Naruto wanted to learn it in the first place.

A part of that technique involved cleansing one's chakra of any personality - to remove the personal modifiers everyone had in their internal energy. Things like their natural element, their spiritual signature, emotions, all of it had to be removed. Even yin and yang chakra had to be perfectly balanced. 

The goal of the technique was for your chakra to reach a perfect neutral, all to achieve a perfectly executed transfusion technique.

Fail even slightly and the transfusion was poisonous to the recipient. 

A little bit of poison was a small price to pay to avoid dying of chakra exhaustion, but it meant the technique wasn’t something done willy nilly. There was a whole list of possible side effects and consequences for chakra poisoning. None of them were positive.

He wanted to know how to do that technique. If he knew how to cleanse his chakra, it might be possible to take it one step further and make his chakra signature feel like someone completely different.

That was his end goal.

But first he had to learn that jutsu.

As a common medical procedure, how hard could it really be to learn?

* * *

“Come on old man! It’s just one measly technique! Just one demonstration! I’ll work it out on my own from there.” Naruto whined, kicking his feet restlessly.

Shinnō glared up at him. “And I said no. That technique is a waste of time. It’s only use is to help chakra exhausted patients, and the only ones that care about that are shinobi and samurai.”

Naruto pouted. The only patients Shinnō went out of his way to help were civilians, and though he had treated a shinobi or two in the time Naruto had been with him, that had only been because he’d had little choice.

A pair of beaten up Konoha ninja had once dropped in on them and all but threatened Shinnō into fixing them up. Then they’d left (without paying) the moment their wounds had been cleaned and bound. Since the old Uzumaki didn’t want to reveal his ex-shinobi status, he’d had little choice but to comply.

“No. And that’s final. Now come here and help me identify this bacteria. It’s acting strangely.” The white haired man waved to one of his textbooks, one of two dozen that was open before him.

Naruto sighed and dropped down from his branch into the forest clearing. He took another look into the microscope. 

He looked for any of the common identifiers Shinnō had taught him, then went through a stack of books trying to match what he’d seen to a specific strain of bacteria.

The entire setup was located in a circle of seals, ensuring the specimens would remain uncontaminated. Something that was needed seeing as they were currently outside, in a forest, under mild rain…

It was a wonder it worked at all.

* * *

While Shinnō didn’t want to teach him, that didn’t mean Naruto was out of options.

But as it turned out, Kakashi didn’t know the technique, and Nazumi had forgotten most of the theory and no longer had the chakra control to perform it. Jiraiya wasn’t here, and Naruto doubted he knew it to begin with. The Hokage might know it, but then he’d ask _why_ Naruto wanted to learn, and what was he supposed to say to that? 

That only left…

The hospital?

The technique was beginner level stuff, all he had to do was sign up for the medic-nin classes in Konoha Hospital and learn it there, right?

* * *

“No.” The receptionist barely even glanced at him as she dismissed his application.

“Oh come on, miss! I am a really good student. I promise to study extra hard!” Naruto insisted.

This time he didn’t even get the politeness of a refusal, he was simply ignored. It might have something to do with the fact that Naruto barely reached the top of the reception desk. Even standing on his toes, he could barely see over the counter.

It was painfully obvious that he was young, but damn it, Konoha was known for their child geniuses. There had to have been _someone_ that went through this course younger than him.

He opened his mouth to keep insisting when he felt a hand grab the back of his jacket. In a second, he was lifted into the air and unceremoniously tossed out the door.

Reflexes kicking in saved him from being dispelled as he managed to land on his feet. But that didn’t stop the surge of indignation and irritation that welled up inside him.

He knew the course was only for shinobi, and he hadn’t graduated yet, but they weren’t even willing to speak with him!

With how valuable medic-nin were, Konoha should be eager to accept anyone that wanted to learn, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

So Naruto went to his final option. The one thing that always worked when he had exhausted all other possibilities.

Badgering the Hokage until he agreed.

* * *

“I am sorry Naruto-kun, but that course is only for shinobi. Graduate first, then apply. It has a very advanced curriculum.” Hiruzen said as he scribbled away at his unending tide of paperwork.

Naruto lay on the floor in the Hokage’s office, working on a drawing of Konoha as seen from the Hokage Mountain. This was his fourth attempt, and it was slowly beginning to look good. He figured he’d give it to Jiraiya or Nazumi once the thing could be called halfway decent.

“But I want to do it _now_.” Naruto whined petulantly, for once acting like the child he was. “School is boring, and you won’t let me graduate early.” He didn’t actually dislike that fact though. Jiraiya was the one that had completely barred the possibility, but Sarutobi hadn’t exactly put up a fight. None of the adult figures in Naruto’s life wanted him to become a shinobi younger than the normal graduating age.

As a rule, Konoha generally didn’t like to graduate students early. They made exceptions from time to time, but that was only because of influential people pushing for it. (As had happened with Itachi)

Graduating age tended to lower during war time, but that was seen as a desperate measure by many, and heavily frowned upon by a lot of Konoha’s elite.

Hiruzen smiled fondly down at him, and he got that far off expression that told Naruto that the old man was thinking about Minato. “You seem to have found ways to occupy yourself anyway. What’s the rush, Naruto-kun?”

Naruto held back a grimace as he answered with one of his prepared excuses. “I’m graduating in 3 years, and I don’t want any of my teammates to be hurt. If I can patch people up, that would give us more leeway.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the main reason.

The old man’s expression softened, and he gave a brief smile. “Taking care of your teammates is certainly a worthy goal, Naruto-kun. But that responsibility falls to whomever your jōnin-sensei ends up being, not you.”

Naruto seized on the perceived weakness like a shark smelling blood. “I may not have the responsibility of my teammates' lives, but I want to do everything I can to keep them alive anyways! Iryōjutsu is the best way to do that. I can do it. I _know_ I can. Just let me try, _please_.”

The Hokage sighed and massaged his temples with one hand. Naruto felt a momentary pang of guilt. 

He was essentially asking the leader of the village to bend the rules for him. Hiruzen Sarutobi didn’t have much free time in general, and this would just create more work for him. Showing such blatant favoritism - to him in particular - would also hurt the Hokage’s reputation. Not by much, in the grand scheme of things, but enough that Naruto knew this wasn’t a small thing he was asking for.

It would have been a lot easier to just ask him to teach him the Transfusion Technique straight out, but if he _only_ asked for that, then he’d have to tell him what he wanted it for, and that… no. He didn’t want the Hokage to know.

He didn’t want to be ordered to stop. It probably wouldn’t happen, but just the chance…

He couldn’t risk it.

When the old Hokage lifted his head again, Naruto knew he had won. That resigned but happy smile could mean nothing else.

“Very well, Naruto-kun. But I expect you to do your best. You’re not allowed to give up until the moment you fail your exam, is that understood?” Underlaid in those words were the assumption that he _would_ fail.

Why the old man thought that, Naruto wasn’t entirely sure, but he swore to prove him wrong.

* * *

The day he entered medical classes, it was immediately clear that he’d been dropped into deep end. 

That may have been because he’d insisted on starting as fast as possible, but nobody had warned him that would mean starting in the middle of an ongoing semester, so he figured it was actually a subtle method to dissuade him from trying anything like this again.

It didn’t matter. He would fulfill his promise. He would do this. No matter how much time he had to spend studying.

And by the Sage did he have to study. 

These classes assumed you had gone through the Academy before, and had at least a fundamental understanding of biology.

He had some of the required knowledge. Reading ahead in school, and his apprenticeship to Shinnō helped, but he did not know everything. He ended up gathering a copy of every exam given in the Academy and making sure he could ace them all. Then he read up on higher level biology, chemistry, and some math. All of which would be helpful in catching up to his fellow students.

He did all the exercises and read all the books and papers the course had already gone over, while trying his best to understand the lectures being given. He asked questions to anyone that could answer them, mostly after the lectures but sometimes during them as well, as long as he wasn’t disrupting the class too much.

Shinnō proved invaluable during his study crunch. As Naruto’s personal teacher, he was one of the few that had the time, the inclination, and ability to answer almost every question Naruto came up with. If he found the blond’s newfound enthusiasm strange, he didn’t mention it.

All of this would have been impossible to achieve without Shadow Clones. During this time, a dozen clones was dedicated to nothing but studying every day, while sacrificing their previous activities to make it possible. 

He ended up putting his music practice on hold, severely cut back on entertainment, and restricted the free time his clones spent exploring or doing whatever.

He didn’t spend _all_ his time studying of course, but during the initial catch-up phase he needed half his clones dedicated to nothing but reading and testing themselves.

The class he’d been placed in was still an introductory class (though it clearly required more knowledge than just the Academy gave people), so it wasn’t impossible for him to do it, just really, _really_ difficult. It was still an inhuman amount of work however, as he only had two weeks to go through what was essentially 4 years of schooling.

During those two weeks, his head was swimming with technical details about the human body, medicine, and nonsense words that became more and more meaningful every day.

In the years since he started living with his clones, he’d learned to simply _not_ think about what they were doing in anything but broad strokes, and occasional recollections. It was simply too much, and he had other things to focus on, like his life.

That was essentially true for every single clone as well.

Upon creation, his clones picked up a ‘thread’ from a previous clone more or less at random and continued with whatever that task was. He wasn’t entirely sure how none of his clones picked the same thread. Everything somehow worked out without him having to coordinate anything. There seemed to be an unconscious impulse that allowed him to perfectly coordinate with all his alternate selves. 

Something he was very grateful for, and probably saved him fifteen minutes (at least) every day. Multiply that by the number of clones being delayed, and it would have taken away at least 5 hours _per day_.

But that wasn’t the case now.

With 50% of his clones spending almost all their time studying the same thing, their thoughts tended to mix and match between each other in Naruto’s mind. Every time a new memory packet returned to him, he’d make connections to some other concept one of the other clones had been studying. This had happened before, yes, but never in such numbers, and never for such a long time.

If it hadn’t been for the clones that weren’t studying, Naruto was sure he’d have driven himself mad. The memories of doing anything - _anything at all_ \- but participating in the everpresent grind became like a balm to his soul, giving him a refreshing boost every time he taught about giving up.

His insane schedule did pay off though. On the first day, he was the least knowable person in his class. Everything he knew about medicine came from a few months under Shinnō’s tutelage, and it soon became clear how inadequate that had been. It took years to become a doctor, and the stuff Shinnō had been teaching him had almost nothing to do with his current curriculum. It wasn’t that one was better than the other, they just started at different places.

But five days after he’d started, he was fully caught up to even the most advanced students through nothing but book learning and stubborn-headed determination.

Each of his clones packed a week of studying into a single day (though to be fair, most of that material was pretty simple), so 4 days for a single clone was the equivalent of a month of intense studying. 

A dozen clones doing the same wasn't _quite_ as efficient, owing to the fact that they tended to overlap fields and learn the same thing multiple times, but 4 days of work still roughly meant a full year of studying, which was also about two school years seen purely from a numerical standpoint.

So while his head was filled with geography and historical facts, math formulas and grammar, while his mind was _overflowing_ with medical jargon, and his dreams were filled with human skeletons singing about their composition, it _did_ work.

He didn’t relent during the weekend either. Naruto had sworn he would pass his first exam, and that was what he was going to do.

He had more to prove than anyone, and there were a lot of people that didn’t want him to succeed. If he was to pass the test, there had to be no doubt about his competence.

There was more at stake than just that half-theorized technique now. He had put his pride on the line, and his pride demanded he do everything he could to surpass people’s expectations and be fully accepted into the hospital’s training program.

Though this venture had originally been about learning the Chakra Transfusion Technique, that was still months away. They hadn’t even started practical exercises yet. Genuine iryōjutsu were still months away.

Which… honestly, what had he expected?

Sign up to the medical program, learn one measly jutsu and walk away? Even if he hadn’t sworn that he would pass the test, his ‘quick’ plan of learning that technique was flawed from the start. It simply wasn’t how schools worked.

* * *

When he returned to the hospital after the weekend, he was the student with the greatest theoretical understanding of anyone in his class.

That wasn’t received well by the other students, but Naruto barely had time to register their emotions before he was back to the grind.

He may have adequate theoretical understanding but there were still a set of exercises he had to master.

He’d been working on them in parallel to all his studying the previous week, though only with a single clone, and only to get an overview of the task in front of him. 

It was time to master the practical parts of his upcoming test: Chakra control exercises.

Those exercises… 

It had become apparent that this was the reason Hiruzen didn’t believe he could succeed. 

Naruto had always struggled with chakra control. From the moment he first learned of the concept, he’d always had problems with it.

The reason for that was nuanced and complicated, but it boiled down the simple fact that he had _too much chakra_.

His genes and the entity he housed within him would both have given him trouble with it, but both combined? It would be a miracle if he ever managed the simplest of medical jutsu.

In fact, conventional knowledge said it was impossible.

Screw conventional knowledge.

He had enough control to manage the Rasengan. How hard could it be to reach adequate levels to pass the exam?

Almost impossible, as it turned out.

The Rasengan was indeed the pinnacle of shape transformation. It required the user to precisely control a massive amount of chakra in a very specific way for an extended period of time. It also had to be done with chakra _outside_ the body, which made it potentially even more difficult.

His father’s original jutsu was ranked A on the difficulty scale shinobi used for ninjutsu. And not just for its effect or destructive impact, but also for its _difficulty_.

The Rasengan was not an easy jutsu.

And yet Naruto had learned it. Him. With his famously awful chakra control.

Even if he’d had his chakra control shot to hell by not using any clones for a full week, he would still have been able to use it.

He didn’t have fundamentally bad chakra control, even when his coils were bloated with energy, his chakra control didn’t directly suffer.

No, his chakra control could actually be labeled good from a certain point of view.

But there was more than one aspect of chakra control.

What he had practiced for hours and hours was the ability to manipulate his own chakra freeform, also called shape transformation.

This was the type of control that would let him form water into dragons, wind into razor sharp blades, fire into rings and loops. It was what would allow him to form earth into ever more complex structures, and lighting into shapes it had no business taking.

He was _good_ at shape transformation, and getting slowly better at elemental transformation.

Those things together would make him an amazing ninjutsu specialist, and that wasn't even mentioning his chakra capacity.

None of that helped him here however.

His ‘condition’ - if it could be called that - made it very difficult for him to regulate the precise amount of chakra he was releasing at any one time. 

After he’d released his chakra, manipulating it came easy. But in the moment of release, he failed. He didn’t have the capability to adjust the amount of chakra he used beneath a certain threshold. And nothing he’d ever done had been able to fix that.

Yes, using Shadow Clones to exhaust the massive reservoir of energy within him helped. It helped a lot. He went from being completely unable to even walk up a tree without blowing it apart, to being able to stick tiny leaves to his forehead.

And that was good. That meant he had decent control… For an academy graduate.

That wasn’t even close to what he needed now.

These exercises required him to emit a tiny amount of chakra at a steady rate. Which just wasn’t something he was capable of.

Even when he used his clones to get rid of his overflow problem. Emitting tiny amounts of chakra with coils as large as his was beyond troublesome.

Most experienced ninja had chakra coils like garden hoses; capable of spraying a great deal at once, but also able to adjust the flow down to a trickle.

Naruto’s coils were like industrial pipes in comparison. Even when those pipes only had a fraction of the pressure they could hold, he had no real ability to limit that flow below a certain level.

He had valves, not sprayers. He could shut off the flow, and even keep it to a trickle if he truly concentrated, but keeping that trickle consistent? To adjust that trickle freeform? To control his massive coils to such a degree? 

Impossible. It was like asking leg muscles to be as flexible and precise as his finger muscles.

Except… that wasn’t _quite_ true. 

Chakra could be precisely controlled outside the user's body. One didn’t _need_ the chakra network to control it. That was the entire basis of shape transformation after all. 

Chakra was the energy of soul and body melded together. It was moulded in the hara, and spread throughout the body by the way of the chakra network and emitted by the tenketsu.

It should - in theory - be possible to use chakra even without a complete chakra network. One only needed their spiritual and physical energies to form the correct mixture. From there, it should be possible to manipulate it directly. 

No need for that intricate spiritual organ to spread it safely throughout the body.

It was just an aide. A _vital_ aid for anyone Naruto had ever heard of, but it should be possible to bypass it. In _theory_.

That was the thought Naruto clung to as he meditated.

His energy swirled inside him, warm, relaxing, and _oh so_ potent.

His hands formed the ram seal almost of their own volition. 

He wasn’t good at this. Internal chakra sensing was difficult when his own energy overwhelmed him. Doing it with weakened clones got better results, but he was still not good at it. If someone cast a genjutsu on him, he’d be lucky if it took less than a minute for him to notice. 

The amount of energy he had to work with was far more than anyone his age should have. Even as a clone containing a fraction of a fraction of his true potential, the only person in his age group that could be measured on the same scale as him was Sasuke.

Holding out a hand, he concentrated on the first of their exercises; light generation.

His palm lit up with a soft blue glow. 

Then it flared up so bright it was difficult to see anything but the blinding light.

Naruto squinted through the glare as he tried to lower the amount of energy fed to the jutsu, only to have it shut down completely.

He sighed and tried again, creating that blinding blue light once more.

He frowned at it, _willing_ it to settle down, to decrease its brightness to a normal level. 

The light fluctuated for a moment, but didn’t settle.

This was the furthest he’d ever gotten before, but he didn’t let that stop him. Infusing his chakra with as much willpower as he could manage, he _commanded_ the light to lower.

The light fluctuated even more, growing dimmer, but at the same time brighter. One moment it would become so bright Naruto could see it through his eyelids, other times it would actually reach the level he wanted to achieve. 

It just wouldn’t _stay there_.

Breathing in deeply, he concentrated back on his internal energy. He kept the jutsu going, returning to that too-bright level.

He could vaguely feel his chakra flowing from his torso and through his right arm. 

It wasn’t in any way clear, but he _could_ feel it. Focusing on that feeling, he tried to hold back the majority of the energy in that arm. 

It wasn’t the same as controlling his coils. It _wasn’t_. It shouldn’t be. Controlling his own coils was not something Naruto was capable of, and was an ability relegated to S-ranked kinjutsu for their sheer potency and risk.

No. This would be like controlling the Rasengan. Freeform manipulation of chakra; shape transformation. It was the same. This _was_ the same.

Except the energy was still inside him.

It shouldn’t matter. It _didn’t_ matter.

He kept telling himself that, over and over and over again. Repeating it to himself so many times he actually started to believe it.

Completely losing track of time, he eventually opened his eyes and squinted at his hand.

A wide grin broke across his face. 

Before him was a steady light glowing softly.

He had done it!

The excitement broke his concentration, and the light flared up again. Naruto didn’t care. He’d found a way to limit his chakra flow to that of a regular person!

The sheer relief he felt at that thought was unreal.

He hadn’t fully realized how much that had worried him before, but it clearly had. With this, his chakra control may even become good in every aspect. With time and effort he should be able to reach the heights of even the greatest medic nin.

It would require more work than he’d ever put into anything before. He’d have to put in more effort for every tiny timble of control than anyone else, but it _should_ work.

Grinning like a loon, Naruto celebrated. He had just broken the cardinal sin of all Shadow Clones; losing track of time, but even that didn’t matter. Because he’d just done something normally considered impossible. It was worth it a thousand times over.

* * *

The second exercise they were tasked with mastering was the liquid manipulation technique.

Despite the name, it wasn't actually a Water Release jutsu. It wasn’t nature transformation at all, actually. If it had been, Naruto would have had a much easier time of it. No. This, like every other exercise he’d been given, was manipulating chakra in its pure form.

Creating a bubble of chakra, it was possible to contain gases and liquids inside it. The more weight it held, the more difficult it became to sustain the bubble.

One might think Naruto would be good at this exercise. A large part of the Rasengan was containing chakra in a way very similar to this after all. But the Rasengan didn’t actually need a shell around it. It was pure chakra spinning in uncountable loops within a sphere, but that ‘sphere’ didn’t actually exist. It was just an imagined border created by the user of the technique. It was where the chakra wasn’t allowed to go - existing only due to a _lack_ of chakra in the shape of a sphere, and not _because_ of it.

But despite him not actually having any real experience with the exercise, creating a bubble of chakra wasn’t a problem, nor was maintaining it. He was good enough at shape transformation that it only took a few hours of practice.

Making it waterproof was harder, but doable. He’d mastered the water walking technique over a year ago after all. 

Increasing the surface tension of the water could be a workaround that would let him skip a lot of the needed skill, but that wouldn’t work on oil or some other liquids. The upcoming exam only tested water though, so that was something he could work on at a later date.

His main problem right now was keeping his chakra from seeping into the liquid and disrupting it. 

That had become… troublesome. 

He’d worked for _days_ on it before getting any real progress. He’d only begun inching forwards when that one clone had made its breakthrough with the chakra light.

The problem was that the water inside his chakra bubble would get so agitated it inevitably destroyed its containment. 

When he’d finally found a way to decrease the amount of chakra he channeled, he'd managed to calm that effect down somewhat. It took hours and hours of mind-numbing practice, but he’d finally managed to keep the liquid steady, keeping it from doing its best impression of a steam explosion like it had done before. 

That was an improvement, but the instructor had been clear in that the water should be free-flowing within its shell.

Naruto frowned heavily at the orb hovering above his palm. 

With a thought and a surge of chakra he manifested another clone beside himself. 

The second clone shifted his hands above the sphere, slowly but surely forcing his chakra let go of the water. It was a feat that would have broken his concentration and ruined the bubble if he’d tried it with only one of himself.

Naruto grinned, then focused fully back on the exercise as the bubble wobbled. He had to keep his chakra as still as possible - willing it to _not_ seep into the sphere.

The clone dispelled ten minutes later, at the same time his scheduled memory transfer came around. That clone hadn’t contained a complete copy of his current mind, but it wasn’t too far removed. Those ten extra minutes wouldn’t make much difference on his next transfer.

* * *

The third exercise - object infusion - was easier than the first two, but that didn’t mean it was free of struggle.

Put too much chakra into anything and it breaks. But this exercise was something he’d been doing for a while. It was the way he could copy objects through the Shadow Clone technique, after all.

Shadow shuriken or shadow kunai worked just as well for training as normal ones did. Probably even better. He didn’t have to go pick up his stuff after a training session when none of it was real after all. He also didn’t have to fear blunting the real ones through repeated use, or be scared that he’d lose any in the underbrush.

They may pop on contact with the goal, but they _do_ leave a mark, and that was all that really mattered.

This was why he always practiced with shadow kunai and shadow shuriken if he weren’t in the Academy. Same benefit, none of the downsides.

Other shadow weapons or tools were more or less useful depending on what their purpose were. But they were never useless, so he’d gotten good at that aspect of the technique too.

Single use items were best, losing almost none of their potency. Shadowed items didn’t hold up to any kind of wear unfortunately, which was a shame. He could probably do a lot with a thousand shovels.

So he had experience, but while he was better at this than the other exercises, he was far from the level of skill required for the test. 

To pass the exam, Naruto had to fold paper in half by manipulating it with nothing but his chakra.

That was a lot easier said than done. 

His chakra tore any paper he infused it into. 

He hadn’t had this problem a few years ago. Back then, the only things that tore like that was chakra paper, - something designed to react to chakra natures as actively as possible - but then his chakra grew a few levels in potency and he began training his wind nature.

Now, anything flimsy enough would be torn apart. 

Over the last few years, his chakra had become stronger in a way he didn’t fully understand. The same amount of chakra from his younger self would not have ruined normal paper, but his current chakra did. He could call it potency as much as he wanted, but he didn’t truly understand _how_ that worked, or what, specifically, had changed. The amount he would use now was the same as before. 

How could his current chakra accomplish more with less energy than previously?

It was bizarre, but it was reality, so he just had to live with it.

In an attempt to get his chakra to cooperate, Naruto had tried to channel the other five elements in turn, trying to find something that worked better. Unfortunately, he wasn’t at the level of freeform nature transformation with Earth manipulation, and Fire wouldn’t accomplish anything but turn the paper to ash anyways. Lightning and Water didn’t make his situation much better either

He could _probably_ manage the test while using wet paper, but would that be accepted? Naruto didn’t want to take any chances.

But there were more than just those elements weren’t there?

He tried Yin-natured chakra first, if only because the first medical jutsu - the Diagnostic Jutsu - they learned used that nature transformation.

Without easy access to a useful teacher, he had to rope Sasuke into using his Sharingan on some unsuspecting medical students.

His friend casually demonstrated the element on his first try, Sasuke’s chakra taking on a light purple glow. It wasn’t the white glow of the Diagnostic Jutsu, but Sasuke assured him it was the pure form of Yin-transformation.

But when Naruto tried it? 

Failure. 

Failure, failure, and more failure. He worked for _hours_ , trying in vain to get his element to change just a little. And _maybe_ he managed a tiny purple spark among his default blue, but it wasn’t nearly enough to save any papers from being sliced to pieces.

Learning that would take too long, so Naruto turned to Yang Release instead.

The application of Yang-release was most commonly used in the Mystical Palm Technique, so Naruto abused the Sharingan’s bullshit copying ability once more.

(If only he could do the same to learn the Transfusion Technique, but alas, that jutsu was barely ever used, and only as emergency first aid.)

Yang Release proved much harder for Sasuke to do however. He worked on it for half an hour, then gave up on it, citing that he had his own training to get back to.

That was fine however. Just the description of what Sasuke had seen and how he thought it functioned was enough for Naruto.

The exercise just _clicked_. His chakra instantly took on a faint gold color. It was so easy he barely had to try. In fact, Yang Release was probably even easier for him than Wind Release had been.

Ecstatic, he tried to use that to control his paper.

Only to watch in despair as black spots grew on the white surface and it completely fell apart.

…

God dammit.

In the end, he ended up having to _unlearn_ nature transformation. He had to work backwards from what he’d done before, and smooth away any traces of an element within his chakra. 

It was like stumbling along in the dark, trying to feel out an exercise you only had vague ideas about. 

The Sharingan helped, as Sasuke gladly offered his services, anticipating similar difficulties for himself in the future once Naruto told him why he was doing it. 

Which… that may or may not happen. Sasuke was far from normal, but Naruto sincerely doubted what was happening with his own chakra was in any way standard. Assuming the same would happen to Sasuke’s was a bit of a stretch.

Not that he was complaining, it got him the use of a legendary dojutsu to help in his training.

It took a day for them to find a way to smooth out the ‘wavelengths’ of nature transformations in their chakra, which was not ideal, but it couldn’t be helped.

From there, mastering the exercise wasn’t too difficult. He’d spent longer trying to get Yin Release working.

Coupled with his newly acquired ability to reliably channel less chakra than his coils could control, all that was left was the fine external manipulation of actually folding the paper in half. That was the part of this exercise that was _supposed_ to be difficult.

It took no effort for him at all. Compared with the Rasengan, folding paper in half was child’s play.

* * *

The last exercise was the most important by far. 

It was also considered the hardest of the four and something widely regarded as impossible to master. 

That particular belief had been proven false a couple decades back when Tsunade Senju had shown complete mastery over it, but she was also the only person in known history to have perfect chakra control. 

Considering how far from perfect Naruto’s control was, he wasn’t exactly holding his breath here.

The exercise was called chakra cycling.

It was a technique chūnin was expected to learn at some point, and was all but required for a jōnin. Its function could broadly be described as a chakra absorption technique - though it was only applicable to the user’s own chakra.

Even after use, a person’s chakra was still _their_ chakra. It was possible to command the energy after it had left the body. Complex and detailed manipulation was the domain of chakra strings and senjutsu, but everyone could manipulate their jutsu to some degree even after releasing them.

What this technique did was recall that energy back into the user's chakra coils, and then recombining it with their current supply. 

Something like this was only possible for chakra that stayed around after use, of course. It was impossible to reabsorb a Great Fireball after it had exploded.

The more proficient the user was at this ability, the less chakra went to waste, and the more energy could be recycled. It gave what looked (on paper) like over 100% chakra efficiency.

In order to train the technique, Naruto started by trying to reabsorb a Rasengan.

Bad idea. _Very_ bad idea.

Following the demonstration his instructors had given, he’d been able to take some of its energy back into himself. Then the Rasengan lost its stability, and Naruto was helpless to prop up an already collapsing matrix.

It blew up in his face. 

He’d only been a clone, thankfully, but it did demonstrate the problem with practicing with something as potent as the Spiraling Sphere.

There was no reason he shouldn’t be able to do it in time, but he’d have to master the jutsu again in order to succeed. This time performing all the steps backwards, with every failure ending in the loss of all the chakra needed to create the Rasengan and the clone using it.

That was a process that would take _at least_ as long to learn as the Rasengan itself.

Not something he had time for right now.

Instead, he went back to the basics. The Shadow Clone Technique. The single best technique of all time (in Naruto’s completely objective opinion) and the one he was most proficient in.

Conveniently enough, Shadow Clones already had a chakra cycling element built into them. All he had to do was expand on that function.

Normally, when a Shadow Clone dispelled, the unused energy within it returned to its creator. This process was never completely efficient and depended heavily on how far away that clone was currently located.

If the original and the clone was right next to each other, then he could get anywhere between 70 to 90% of his chakra returned to him. The exact number depended on how much chakra the clone had when it dispelled. (The total loss was the same, but having more chakra in a clone meant the percentage that returned was higher.)

The efficiency of this feature fell drastically farther away. If Naruto was at the center of the village, clones dispelling from the wall could get a maximum efficiency of 40%. 

Beyond Konoha? Forget it. He’d be lucky if he got a return of 1%.

At the farthest points his clones could reliably reach, Naruto didn’t get back anything at all. As far as he could tell, only their memories returned to him. 

Which was strange, as he’d been under the impression his memories were stored in his chakra, and the cycling feature was why he received memory feedback at all.

It might just be that the amount of returning chakra was so miniscule he simply couldn’t sense its return. Very little chakra may be able to contain immense amounts of information for all he knew, and he was rubbish at sensing. If a tiny enough piece of chakra returned to him, he’d have no way of knowing.

All he knew for certain was that the memory transfer was just as efficient whether he got an ocean of energy or a tiny trickle. He always felt as if he’d experienced everything himself.

The only times when he didn’t was when his brain overloaded and couldn’t process all the memories fast enough, or that one time when a part of his soul had been torn away because he’d let a Shadow Clone exist longer than it was supposed to.

So since the memories of his Shadow Clones weren’t affected, one would think he wouldn’t care about reabsorbing his clones. He had never struggled with having _too little_ chakra after all. His chakra reserves had always been larger than he knew what to do with. That had been part of the reason he’d started abusing the Shadow Clone to begin with. 

Point being; he’d never seen the need to increase the energy his Shadow Clones returned to him, and he had no need for it now either.

But his main body wasn’t the only one that could use this exercise.

His Shadow Clones could too.

And that? That changed everything.

Shadow Clones absorbing other Shadow Clones changed the entire dynamic of the technique. Thus it changed the very foundation his life was built on.

Shadow Clones couldn’t generate chakra on their own. No matter what Naruto did or tried, no matter how much he pushed, or how much he changed during their creation, or how much they ate or slept, none of it helped.

A Shadow Clone could not generate chakra. That was simply a fact. They had the amount given to them upon creation and not a drop more.

He’d gotten around that in the past by using Jiraiya’s Jutsu Seal. Having his clones carry with them multiple other clones in stasis did work, _kind of_ , but that was just a stopgap measure. It was a workaround for a problem that required hours of preparation and quite a bit of money.

But with chakra cycling… his clones could recharge themselves.

They could maintain their existence with the help of their brethren. They could work on exhausting tasks non-stop without disturbing his all-important memory transfer schedule.

This didn’t turn the scrolls useless either. Quite the opposite actually, it became even more convenient. With this, the Jutsu Seal became a self-contained chakra battery - something that was incredibly rare and relegated only to the most advanced and powerful techniques in the world.

Tsunade Senju’s Strength of a Hundred Seal was similar, and that turned her from a terror on the battlefield to a dominating strategic asset.

His own version wasn’t nearly as formidable, it was _only_ a chakra battery, not an enhancement of his every ability. It took quite some time, money, and preparation to use - though that might decrease as his skills in fūinjutsu increased - but it was still an ability highly regarded in the shinobi world.

As for his mastery of the exercise itself…

100%.

It wasn’t easy or fast, but with enough time to make sure he got every scrap of energy, he could transfer every bit of it from one clone to another.

That should have been impossible.

Only Tsunade had ever gained such mastery over the technique, and it was that mastery over chakra that made her a legend among ninja.

Naruto shouldn’t have been able to replicate something like that. Not for years yet, decades probably, even at his current rate of growth.

But using the chakra cycling technique on a Shadow Clone was… easy.

Much, much easier than he’d been led to believe.

The reason for that? 

He had two minds working on the same task, working from different sides of the equation. If the chakra you’re trying to absorb itself tries to _be absorbed_ , it was apparently a much simpler task than it would otherwise have been.

With other jutsu, such as Earth Wall, an active seal, or just free floating chakra, he could still use the exercise. It took quite a bit of concentration, and he could only retrieve a fraction of the energy present before the rest dissipated into the air, but it was nowhere near the vaunted 100% he could achieve with Shadow Clones.

He’d been told this was the hardest of all the four exercises, but it hadn’t been that way for him. He hadn’t had any special problems like he’d had with all the other exercises so far, he’d just followed the instructions and done it, as easy as that.

It wasn’t easy, but the Rasengan had been much harder to learn than this.

And with that, he had learned everything he needed to. How the fourth - and supposedly hardest - of all the exercises ended up being the easiest for him was just another example of how backwards his chakra was compared with everyone else’s.

He’d managed to learn everything with a little less than two days to spare, which was a comfortable enough leeway for most people, but it did mean he’d essentially used 8 months of subjective time to do what everyone else in his class had only needed 2 weeks for.

Hopefully, it would get easier from here on. Academically, he was all caught up, and his chakra control was now at a level where he actually got discernible progress while practicing the finer details.

Two days later - against the beliefs of everyone he knew - he passed the exam.

* * *

_Hiruzen Sarutobi_

Hiruzen didn’t know if he should despair or celebrate.

Before him was a paper confirming Naruto’s acceptance into Konoha’s medical program.

It should have been impossible. 

Medical ninjutsu required top notch chakra control, control good enough that it was rare even among chūnin. Beyond a few niche genjutsu and ninjutsu, nothing in their profession required more control than iryōjutsu.

It was almost unheard of for people with Naruto’s natural chakra levels to _ever_ get that level of control, nevermind achieving it at 9 years old.

To Hiruzen’s knowledge, Hashirama Senju was the only person with equally large levels of chakra that had still been hailed as an accomplished medic-nin. A major reason for his moniker - God of Shinobi - was because of the man’s _absurd_ chakra capacity coupled with his unbelievable control.

Conventional knowledge said that more chakra equaled worse control. 

The exceptions to that rule were every single one of them S-rank ninja. People like himself, his teacher, and Tsunade.

And Naruto was well on his way to surpass them all.

At nine years old, Naruto had _somehow_ gotten good enough chakra control that he could begin to learn medical ninjutsu.

Being an Uzumaki, the son of a Kage, and the Kyuubi’s jinchūriki, meant that Naruto had more chakra at 9 than anyone Hiruzen had ever heard of. 

The child had almost more chakra (according to his own estimates) than _anyone_ in the village, excluding himself and seven other jōnin.

It wouldn’t take long for Minato’s child to surpass them all. The child’s chakra was still growing, while all of theirs were either stagnant or atrophying.

And if Naruto could maintain -or even improve- on _this_ level of control while his stores continued to grow?

It was like Hashirama all over again.

He had approved Naruto’s request more as an indulgent grandfather than as the Hokage actually granting approval. 

He had figured it would be a good way to teach the blond some humility. He had thought there’d been no way for Naruto to actually succeed. Even if the kid managed to go through 4 years of studies in two weeks (which wasn’t out of the question, considering who his father was), the control exercises should have been impossible for him.

To have to do both tasks at the same time? Doubly Impossible. Hiruzen had a good idea of Naruto’s academic level before he signed him on to this program, and while impressive for his age, it wasn’t anything unheard of. 

It hadn’t been nearly enough to pass this exam at anyways.

So how…? 

No, really… _How_ ? Hiruzen couldn’t have done that. He didn’t know _anyone_ that could have done that.

It went against everything he knew about chakra theory and the limitations of the human mind, but it had happened nonetheless.

And now he had to seriously contemplate the idea of Naruto Uzumaki becoming a medical ninja.

…

It was absurd, but it had just become a possibility.

He wasn’t even certain that this was a good idea. Naruto was a jinchūriki. He was meant to fight on the front lines, to face armies and win. To be the village’s last defence against obliteration and act as a weapon of mass destruction if all else failed.

That did not at all mesh with the role of a medical ninja. 

Then again, that wasn’t such a big obstacle. One made an exception for highly skilled ninja with the understanding that normal tactics and strategies simply didn’t apply to them.

This was why the really big names in the shinobi world had their own dedicated counter tactics, irrespective of what their role _should_ have been.

There wasn’t anyone in the world that fit into the same strategic niche that Minato had inhabited. The same was true for the Tsuchikage, the Raikage, the Kazekage, himself, or any other kage-level fighter. There simply weren’t predesigned roles that fit their skillset like there were for normal shinobi.

So if Naruto wanted to learn medical ninjutsu, Hiruzen wouldn’t stop him. It would be a headache and a half, but they would deal, as long as he didn’t neglect his other fields of study, Naruto would be allowed to continue on his current path.

But there were other problems with Naruto’s recent - very _public_ \- demonstration.

Though he wouldn’t expect most people to pick up on exactly _how_ extraordinary Naruto’s accomplishment was, there were those that would.

Child prodigies had long been a staple of Konoha though. There were a lot of kids with good enough chakra control to get into the Medic Corps at the same age. Just looking at the Academy scores told Hiruzen that there was currently five other children in Naruto’s age bracket capable of doing the same.

The correlation between chakra capacity and control was a generally known fact among academics like him, but it wasn’t something the average ninja knew. How often does one run into someone with Naruto’s levels of chakra? Not often.

It wasn’t an issue most had to consider. Or if they did, they underestimated how big the problem actually was.

The Akimichi had famously huge reserves, and at the moment they had a single certified medic-nin. _One_. 

In comparison, the Nara and the Yamanaka (both smaller clans then the Akimichi) had dozens each.

So while most wouldn’t consider it, there were those that would. By passing this exam, Naruto had irrevocably marked himself as a prodigy. And not just any prodigy, but a prodigy on the same level as Tsunade and Orochimaru. On the same level as Kakashi, Minato, and Itachi.

There was no universe in which this was a good thing for Naruto, but it was out of Hiruzen’s hands now. 

He’d managed to (mostly) keep a lid on the blond’s talent for over 3 years already, that’d have to be enough. 

_Thank the Sage Sasuke’s Academy scores were good enough that he could justify putting Naruto in second place._

What a headache. Given everything Naruto was - along with his now obvious skill - he would be a tempting target for a lot of interests within the village.

Hiruzen would have to focus on the more malicious ones and keep them at bay, he just hoped Naruto could fend for himself regarding the rest. 

If it got too bad, he could always give the boy a crash course in village politics. He hoped it wouldn’t get to that point however.

The old Hokage suppressed a sigh as he stood from his desk. 

He had a councilman to talk to.

* * *

**Author’s Notes:**

In this chapter we see Naruto going about learning the jutsu he wants in the most complicated, over-the-top way imaginable. Though there weren’t a lot of other ways he could have gone about it, not in such a short timeframe anyways, but it still demonstrates how Naruto thinks about work now.

Waiting is something Naruto tries to avoid as much as possible, even if he has to work a hundred times more by taking the 'fastest path'. If he’d just waited until graduation, he'd have found a lot more ways open to him, but that is subjective _decades_ for Naruto. He wants to learn it _now_ , and so he goes farther than anyone else would consider reasonable to learn one little technique to solve a tiny little problem that might not even come up for years yet.

This is also the most fantasy technobabble chapter I’ve ever written, for anything, ever. I enjoyed writing it a lot, though I imagine not everyone is happy about reading it. Sorry about that, I did warn that this would be very technical fic, and this chapter is probably the best example of such.

Other than me elaborating on the magic system to a probably unnecessary degree, it also serves to showcase the skill level of most shinobi and Naruto’s growing abilities.


	9. Passing Days

_ Naruto _

Naruto passing the exam was apparently a much bigger deal than he had thought.

Over the course of a week, half of Konoha’s upper echelon seemed to discreetly lose their minds.

The first person that came to visit him was Shikamaru’s father. It had been a while since he’d last seen Shikaku. 2 years in fact, back during his first and only hospital stay when he’d been 7.

The Jōnin Commander had asked him if he was still experimenting with the Shadow Clone Technique. A question Naruto had first tried to dodge, then lied his ass off about when Shikaku wouldn’t let him.

He didn’t think it worked, because the Nara patriarch had left looking a bit wild around the eyes and muttered more ‘troublesomes’ than Naruto had ever heard in a single conversation before.

The second person that sought him out was Inoichi Yamanaka, Ino’s father, and the current head of the Analysis Team within the Torture and Interrogation divison. From him he got what felt like a completely normal conversation. If it wasn’t for the fact that Naruto had never even talked to the man before, he would have thought he just happened to come by for a visit.

The third person he didn’t even know, but he had eyes as red as the Sharingan and had questioned him extensively about chakra theory and mathematics. Naruto had no idea what that had been about, but he’d answered as best he could. The man had stayed around until Nazumi chased him out.

After that came the head of the T&I division, which was a heavily scarred man that Naruto also didn’t know, but - unlike the previous guy - was kind enough to introduce himself as Ibiki Morino.

Then came a girl from the Intelligence Division which asked him a bunch of seemingly random questions. He was fairly certain they  _ weren’t  _ random, but if they had a purpose he couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

More people came by; Nara, Akimichi, Hyuuga, and other people Naruto didn’t know anything about. Everyone asked him questions or wanted to know his opinion on something.

A frequent question was how he’d passed his examination, and if he could repeat the exercises required for them. He’d done it the first few times, but after a while he’d gotten tired of all the nonsensical requests, so he’d retreated to his apartment and got Nazumi to (politely) toss them out for him.

Among those he knew, Kakashi and Sasuke were the only ones unsurprised by his feat. Even Nazumi asked him once or twice if he’d legitimately passed the test, or if he’d cheated somehow.

The attention did die down after the first two weeks, but him passing that test had a larger impact than he would have thought possible.

Most people didn’t behave any differently, but he noticed the Academy teachers and high-ranking shinobi tended to give him considering glances whenever he passed them by. It was a subtle thing, but it happened enough that he began to pick up on it.

People  _ noticed  _ him now, in a way they hadn’t before. Shinobi that were normally happy to ignore him sent him second looks or engaged him in conversation where before they wouldn’t.

He felt like he was getting scoped out, people getting his measure now that he was suddenly interesting. 

Why that had first happened  _ now _ , he wasn’t certain. He was already a jinchūriki, but he guessed that actually showcasing talent superseded that. A jinchūriki was just a weapon after all. A  _ smart  _ jinchūriki was… something else.

* * *

The classes at the hospital didn’t stop just because he passed his first exam. 

The test was there to determine who could continue to take those classes. It wasn’t a graduating exam or anything, as much as it had felt like one for Naruto. Also, it felt wrong to quit now. Not to mention that he had yet to achieve his original goal.

He dialled back on his commitment to those studies, though that had always been the plan. He didn’t need to work so hard now that he was all caught up, and he wouldn’t be able to either way. There was only so many books and exercises he could force himself through before he turned crazy. He needed a break.

So instead of the dozen clones constantly working on that one thing, he dialed it back to only two full time clones. That, plus the one following Shinnō, meant three full-time clones dedicated to his medical education.

The classes still kept to the evenings every weekday, though there were fewer participants now. Not everyone had passed the entrance exam, and participation was on a more voluntary basis than before.

Scheduling could be a nightmare in a Hidden Village. There was no telling when someone would be stuck on a week-long mission outside the village or be otherwise indisposed for an extended period of time.

He attended every class he could as a matter of course, though only as a clone. 

His real body was required for his daily sparring sessions with Sasuke, which often coincided with the hospital’s classes. Sasuke was far too strong to fight with only clones at this point. All those years with his insane training schedule had paid off. With his Sharingan and sheer speed, no amount of clones were enough to face the Uchiha. Not unless he buried him under the sheer weight of bodies at least…

His time at the medical program didn’t require a real body anyways. It was still only theoretical work interspersed with the occasional chakra control exercise. They’d begun to touch upon the Diagnostic Jutsu finally, but the Mystical Palm - or anything more advanced - was still months off.

Now that he actually had the time to socialize in that class, he’d tried to mend some of the bridges he’d barely noticed he’d burned with his meteoric rise through it. 

…

But he found that he couldn’t.

No matter who he approached, he’d always be met with a cold shoulder or condescending looks.

Child prodigies were isolated for a reason. They didn’t fit with their age group, and were seen as children by those older than them. Couple that with jealousy and disgust, - either at the obvious nepotism that got him there, or his jinchūriki status - and he was quite firmly an outsider.

He  _ could _ get over that hurdle. Get closer to the worst offenders, annoy them until they blow up at him. Diffuse them, then do something nice. Ask for forgiveness and explain his reasons. Work from there to win the rest over. 

He could see how to change the class's opinions. But something like that would take time. At least three months if he rushed it. Longer if he made a mistake.

It simply wasn’t worth the effort.

The entire situation was a microcosm of his status with the rest of the village, though he was more feared than anything among the civilians.

He had considered how to win them over as long as he could remember. The pranks had been his childish attempt at achieving that, though it had been more instinct than a truly thought out plan. Despite that it had actually proven shockingly effective, though it only changed fear and resentment to annoyance and anger. 

He far preferred that to how it used to be, but it was still a far cry from acceptance.

Changing everyone’s opinions on him was the work of a lifetime. Unless he became a war hero like his father, there were no simple roads to acknowledgement. The sheer number of people in Konoha meant he could work on nothing but that for months and it’d still only be a drop in the bucket.

Changing a person’s opinion was  _ hard _ .

Whatever. He had friends elsewhere. He didn’t need this class to like him too. If he wanted more friends, he could find them where they weren’t predisposed to dislike him.

It hurt, but he forced himself not to care. It was unimportant. All of it was unimportant.

The pounding anger and jealousy bombarding him every time he entered the classroom was only temporary. It wasn’t his fault. 

_ It wasn’t his fault! _

If he was a little clingier with Nazumi than usual these days, no one but him needed to know.

* * *

Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Usually that word wasn’t quite as literal as what Naruto could do.

It had been years since he first read the writings of Mito Uzumaki and thought: ‘Hey, I can do that too!’

As far as he’d been told, his mother hadn’t had the same ability. Jiraiya couldn’t remember her ever mentioning it at least, though he had said she’d been a great judge of character and that she’d always catch a lie, no matter who told it.

Perhaps Kushina - like Naruto at first - hadn’t even realized she’d had the ability. It was a subtle thing, and considering she’d been appointed the fox’s jailer when she was still a child, it was possible she’d just never considered it as anything more than a personal talent.

There was nothing in their seals concerning the ability. It was merely a side effect of being the Kyuubi’s jinchūriki, something Mito said came from the Nine Tailed Fox, who was itself naturally drawn to negative emotions.

Why that was so, Naruto hadn’t the faintest idea. He didn’t doubt the truth of it though. He could feel negative emotions very clearly.

Though he, unlike Mito, wasn’t limited to only those. How could he be? Feeling the emotions of another was a bizarre enough ability to begin with, but to  _ only  _ feel the negative ones? Where was the sense in that?

He’d only noticed the negative emotions in the beginning, but the positive ones weren’t hard to find once he’d actually started looking.

People were a kaleidoscope of feelings. Some felt more than others, but Naruto had never met anyone that was completely free of them.

Sitting atop his father’s head on the Hokage Monument, he basked in the hearts of Konohagakure, grinning as he felt the waves of emotion crash against him. 

It felt…  _ good _ . Like waves of warm water washing against him.

He couldn’t make out many details at this range, but the aggregate feelings of the city was just as fascinating as those belonging to a single person.

It was an ordinary day, and the emotions rising up from below were just as ordinary; contentment, restlessness, joy, sadness, happiness, anger, safety… a bit of fear. There was a whole list of them. Some were things he didn’t even recognize, feelings he couldn’t ever remember feeling himself.

There were a lot more positive feelings than negative ones, with the exception of stress, which was just about everywhere. Though he didn’t know if he should classify that as a negative emotion. It seemed more neutral to him.

Accomplishment was there as well, though significantly rarer. Konoha was an active city. It was constantly in motion, and constantly evolving. It didn’t ever stop, even in the dead of night. It only slowed down, never ceasing entirely.

Determination was also a common feeling. 

Emotions tended to linger in large enough quantities, though that quantity was usually too much for a single event or a singular person to produce.

Some emotions lingered longer than others, though he hadn’t yet figured out what was the longest lasting. Determination was definitely up there though.

Countless hours spent training from every single shinobi of Konoha had beaten that emotion into the village’s training grounds. Blood, sweat, and tears had been used to pound a permanent mark of determination and persistence into the city. It was something Naruto had become gradually aware of as he traveled to other settlements. Most places simply didn’t have that aspect to them. And if they did, it never quite lived up to what Konohagakure oozed from every pore of its being.

The will to risk your life to improve. The will to fight and die. The will to kill. The will to protect.

The Will of Fire.

Naruto could  _ see  _ it. In a way no one else could. 

It burned within the populace, within the stones, grass, and ground of the village. It sat within homes, and shone from the floors of the hospital where the doctors and nurses spent far more time than was required. From the central district to the wall, the Will of Fire burned strongly.

The people of this village was determined to protect and nurture it, and they worked for that with a passion Naruto had never seen equaled anywhere else.

Naruto leaned back, basking in emotions the same way others might bask in the rays of the sun.

* * *

Naruto studied his hands. Red and blue spots had begun to develop in the last few days. Rashes, and bruises unrelated to the wounds he got from fighting Sasuke.

They didn’t stay around long. As with every other damage his body sustained, they didn’t last more than a few hours, a day at most. The fact that they appeared at all was a cause for concern though.

He’d done the logical thing and asked a medical professional for help. In this case, Shinnō.

“Hmm…” The old man hummed, tapping one of his bruises as Naruto clamped down on the pain. If he didn’t, he’d dispel. Not the first time Shinnō had caused that to happen, but equally annoying every time.

“It’s chakra burn.” He declared, waving the problem off as if it didn’t matter.

Naruto tilted his head. “Chakra burn? I thought that only happened when another’s chakra invaded your body.”

The white haired Uzumaki shook his head. “Nah. That’s just the most common cause. It’s just too much chakra infusing living tissue in a way it can’t take.”

“Huh…” Naruto mused, looking down at his fading bruises..

That seemed to be the end of the conversation as Shinnō walked over to his backpack, - a backpack he only kept around because  _ not  _ having one would have been suspicious - and slung it across his shoulder. He checked out of the inn in short order, and soon they were back on the road.

Naruto hadn’t expected the thread from their half-hour old conversation to be picked up again, so he was pleasantly surprised when Shinnō began speaking.

“You’ve been restricting your chakra within your arms, haven’t you?”

Naruto blinked, then nodded hesitatingly.

Shinnō grinned. “Don’t be surprised. I use the same technique, as did a lot of the clan’s better medics back when...” He trailed off, scowling at the road.

Starting again, Shinnō continued as if nothing had happened. “It's just the excess chakra that slip through your coils seeping into your flesh. It’ll go away as you get better control and more experience. Just be careful not to overdo it, and you should be fine.” The old man finished, nodding assuredly.

Naruto breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Bah!” Shinnō waved him off. “What kind of master would I be if I didn’t take care of my pupil?”

* * *

Naruto’s goal going into medical classes had been to invent a very specific jutsu. And yes, that was still one of his primary motivations, but through the subjective months he’d spent studying he’d begun to realize something else.

Healing, fixing people… That was a worthy endeavor. It was also a goal without an end.

He could dedicate his life to that goal and still be going strong in a hundred years. 

To eradicate sickness and cure all ills; that was something he could pursue with a clean conscience. It could give him a direction, something he’d spent a long time looking for.

But he hesitated.

He didn’t know why, but… it still didn’t seem like the _right_ thing. He liked medicine, and liked helping people. But that wasn’t everything he wanted to do. He was sure there was more to it. 

He wanted to be more than a doctor. He wanted to do more than heal people.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth pursuing.

So he took that ambition -the ambition of the perfect healer- and hid it deep within his heart. 

He might dig it up again one day. For now however, he would continue searching.

* * *

Naruto grinned at the flame that danced between his hands. It wasn’t much, but this was still just the beginning.

He’d gotten his fire transformation up to a respectable level, far past what he’d originally estimated he’d achieve by this time.

He still hadn’t had any luck with direct earth transformation, but he knew it was only a question of time. 

After all, now that his clones had a way to refill their chakra, he could actually practice heavy nature transformation without fear of them dispelling.

The same was true for wind, water, and lightning manipulation. 

Yin and yang too, he supposed, though the only use he had for Yin Release was the Diagnostic Jutsu, and that technique was one of those that didn’t actually require him to have much (or any) ability with its constituent element. He didn’t have a single jutsu yet for Yang Release, but he supposed that too was only a question of time. 

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get better at both either way.

The point was that thanks to the chakra cycling exercise, he’d multiplied the effectiveness of his elemental training. Before, he’d have been lucky if a clone survived using more than two C-rank wind jutsu. Now? With half a dozen clones stored within his Jutsu Seals?

Letting the fire dissipate, Naruto stood up. 

Going through the required hand seals, he used up the vast majority of the energy he was composed of in one go. 

“Wind Release: Great Hurricane!”

The B-ranked jutsu tore at the ground around him as the clearing shook. 

Naruto laughed as he stood in the center of a storm created on a whim.

The jutsu ended and the winds settled.

Nothing happened. 

Events like these were a dime a dozen in Konoha. Nobody batted an eye at jutsu of this caliber being thrown around. 

One needed a level of destruction at least an order magnitude greater than this to truly get attention. The fact that he used Wind Release was a bit unusual, but the Sarutobi clan still had a dozen or so members, and there were some unaffiliated shinobi that also used the element. It wasn’t unheard of.

Naruto cracked his knuckles before unrolling the scroll strapped to his leg. A hand seal and a surge of chakra later and another clone stood before him.

Naruto held out a hand. The duplicate took it. The chakra within the clone surged and began flowing into him, refilling his empty reserves almost to full capacity. 

Once the clone was all but empty, it dispelled. Naruto hurried to get a hold of the last scraps of energy.

Waste not, want not.

* * *

Some of his most basic assumptions of the Shadow Clone technique had become… suspect lately.

The more he thought about them, the more they didn’t make sense.

For one, the memories Naruto got from his clones had nothing to do with his chakra returning. If that had been the case, then Shadow Clones should have gotten the memories of the clones they absorbed.

They did not. Instead, it was the main Naruto that got everything, even though every scrap of energy was absorbed into another him, his real body was still the only one that got the memories of the clone.

He’d tested how quickly the memory return happened. And the result of that… 

To the limit of his ability to measure time, the effect was instantaneous.

Faster than the chakra returned even, since that was something he could  _ actually  _ figure out, though not very accurately.

His chakra moved between 4 to 6 times faster than the speed of sound. That was something he was feeling pretty good about being able to measure actually. The set-up had  _ not  _ been easy to acquire, and he’d still ended up with massive uncertainties. 

But his memories…

Physics said the speed of light was the fastest thing in the universe. Though Naruto had doubted that fact from the moment he’d read it. Summoning could call someone from anywhere nigh-instantly. And though he couldn’t really test it, he was fairly certain that technique exceeded the speed of C. And that was just one technique. There should be others. His father had been able to teleport after all.

He had no ability to measure the speed his memories returned at. But if he was a betting man (which he was, professionally even), he’d say the memory return was even faster than summoning. It was an event that was  _ truly  _ instant, in a way nothing was supposed to be.

He couldn’t say for certain why he thought so, but it was a feeling that wouldn’t go away, and Naruto knew better than to discard his gut instinct.

He had no proof for his suspicions, but what he did know was that his memories did not return with his chakra, nor did they use any method known to him.

Then there was the limit his clones met at 600 km.

Having created a lot more Jutsu Seals - and being older and stronger than the last time - he had a much easier time getting to the border now than before. He didn’t even have to lose any scrolls.

Since he knew how far away the limit was and how many clones it would take to get there, all he had to do was include a couple extra. Then one of those extras would simply turn around and return the scroll whence it came.

The first thing he checked was that the limit was the same whatever direction he ran in - which he hadn’t really doubted, but it was good to check anyway. The next thing he tried was pinpointing the limit closer than just 600-ish kilometers.

That was a lot harder.

In fact, it proved to be impossible.

Why?

Because the exact limit kept changing.

The easiest variable to measure was the time component. The earlier in the day he reached the limit, the farther away it was. That meant the border began shrinking from the moment he woke up. He hadn’t yet been able to determine how fast it did so, or how far away it was the moment he woke up, but it was there all the same.

A second (much harder to measure) variable was willpower. If he paid enough attention to what a particular clone was doing, he could purposefully stretch the limit by focusing. Basically by doing nothing but wishing very hard he could get the limit to change. It was a feature of the technique that didn’t need any extra chakra, and was in fact not helped by it in the slightest.

The third variable he’d found was his mood.

The limit of how far away he could send his clones without them dispelling depended on his  _ mood _ .

That was just… How? Why?

And not just his own mood either, but the mood of his clones as well. 

The aggregate emotion of every single instance of him affected the range he could act at.

Positive or particularly intense emotions increased the limit by a couple kilometers, while negative ones didn’t seem to impact it at all. All of this was  _ per mind _ that experienced them.

He didn’t even know what to think about that.

That was the first instance of his clones being able to affect each other without using the original as a middleman. And he was fairly certain this wasn’t something built into the technique.

He was very familiar with the matrix of the Shadow Clone Technique by now. And the distance limit was not something hard coded into it. In fact, there was no sign of any such limit within the jutsu, which meant the phenomenon was naturally occurring and a consequence of some attribute of the technique itself or him as its user.

It was chakra resonance, as he’d first suspected. He’d done experiments with resonance seals to confirm that. They worked at  _ exactly  _ the same range, and acted the same way to his range variables. If that wasn’t proof, then he didn’t know what was.

But what chakra resonance  _ actually  _ was, nobody could properly explain to him. Even the Hokage didn’t know, which severely cut down on potential people that might even have an idea.

But… he might have one. It was nothing he could prove, but the fact that _his Shadow Clones_ could affect the chakra resonance of _the original_ , at range, with nothing but mood swings.

…

It gave him some ideas.

But if those ideas were correct, then he was a lot more connected with his clones than he’d first thought.

Honestly, he should have thought of it sooner.

He’d had all the puzzle pieces for years. He’d had them since he was seven, but he just hadn’t made the connection. 

The real hint wasn’t the border. That was just what had made him reconsider everything he knew.

The central piece of the puzzle, the cornerstone of it all… 

His soul was damaged when a clone went over its time limit.

That should have told him everything he needed to know.

His clones contained pieces of his soul.

No. That wasn’t completely accurate.

He didn’t split his soul every time he created a new clone. That would be absurd. He had heard about soul splitting techniques. Jiraiya and the Hokage had told him a lot about them.

Of course they had. The pinnacle of such techniques was the Shiki Fujin. The very jutsu that had allowed his father to bind the Nine Tails within him in the first place.

He knew from those discussions that splitting and recombining a soul was not something so casually done.

So if not that, then… stretching it?

That, he could see happening.

If his soul could stretch from his original body to all his clones, then everything made sense. 

That was the connection he always felt at the back of his mind. That was the reason he could share his senses. That was the reason memories returned to him irrespective of his chakra.

It even explained why his clones dispelled when he fell asleep.

His soul had to rest, and sleeping meant it became inactive. Thus his soul became unable to sustain his clones any longer.

A rested soul could obviously stretch itself over longer distances than an exhausted one, so that was why the distance limit was longer in the mornings than the evenings.

Everything fit together.

It did imply that his soul could stretch across an area 600 km in diameter though.

He didn’t know what to think about that.

Was that normal? Surely not. Then again, how could he know if it was? As far as he knew, nobody had ever pushed the Shadow Clone technique like Naruto was doing. There were no studies detailed enough about chakra resonance, since nobody even knew what it was in the first place.

All this served as a reminder of how dangerous Shadow Clones could be to use. 

Physical damage may not transfer, and mental attacks was extremely limited when the clones automatically dispelled whenever their ‘image’ was too disturbed.

But soul damage?

Soul damage was fair game. Wherever a Shadow Clone of him was, his soul was as well. If someone - or some _thing_ - could target that, then he might as well be there in person.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t continue as he was. The benefits far outweighed the risks in his mind, but it did mean he couldn’t act as if being a clone made him completely invulnerable.

Though even with all the puzzle pieces slotting so neatly into place, he couldn’t say anything for certain. This was uncharted territory, for him or anyone else.

The thought was exciting to no end.

Though this was still only an hypothesis. No matter how much he believed it to be true. He had correlated all the evidence and signs he could see, and come up with a plausible explanation, but he didn’t actually have a way of testing it.

Though… he could try asking the Hokage. Maybe he knew? And if not, then maybe he’d allow him to read the section of Forbidden Scroll regarding the Shadow Clone Technique.

Then again… asking about the Shadow Clone - especially something as esoteric and specific as that - might easily lead to some very uncomfortable questions. He could misdirect and be vague about things with his semi-grandfather, but if the Hokage asked him straight out what he was doing, then Naruto didn’t think he could lie to him. Nor did he want to, for that matter. He’d spill the beans, and then…

No.

Best to hold off on it for now.

Was there someone else he could ask?

Jiraiya? No. Same problem as with the Hokage. Nazumi had been a good ninja once, but she wasn’t an academic, and Naruto didn’t think she’d ever used the Shadow Clone.

Kakashi…  _ maybe _ , but he didn’t think it likely that he knew anything, and it still contained an element of risk.

What about Shinnō?

…

That might work.

Shinnō was a veteran ninja. And not just that, he was a veteran Uzumaki Seal Master, doctor, and medic-nin. If anything, Shinnō might actually be a better option than the Hokage.

But…

Was that without risk?

No.

While Shinnō would never reveal what Naruto was doing to the Hokage, that didn’t mean telling him was without risk.

Naruto trusted Shinnō. He trusted him not to lie if Naruto asked him anything directly and seriously. Naruto trusted him to train him in medicine. He trusted him with the lives of strangers. He trusted him with his own life, both in combat and if he was dying of sickness or wounds.

He’d even trust him with the life of his friends, even if they were ninja of Konoha, simply because they were  _ Naruto’s  _ friends.

Even if Naruto couldn’t read Shinnō’s emotions like they were stamped on his brow (which he could), he still would have seen the fondness the old man had for him. 

Shinnō had been traveling alone for a long time. Naruto was the first true companion he’d had in years, and that meant a lot. The old man saw him as a grandson, almost to the same extent as the Third Hokage did.

But…

Shinnō was angry. He was  _ always  _ angry. It was a constant shimmering beneath the surface, a hatred he’d carried with him for decades, all the way back to the fall of Uzushio.

If Naruto asked Shinnō to verify his hypothesis, then he would have to give the old man access to his very  _ soul _ .

And while Naruto trusted that the elder Uzumaki had his best interest at heart…

Naruto was a jinchūriki, one of nine super weapons scattered across the continent. 

He was a jinchūriki located in the middle of Konoha.

If Naruto gave Shinnō direct access to his soul, he’d also give the man access to his seal.

The temptation to take revenge might be too much.

He didn’t want to believe Shinnō was capable of something like that. Didn’t want to believe the man would sacrifice someone he saw as a grandson in order to release the Kyuubi in the middle of a populated city full of civilians and people that had nothing to do with the fall of his beloved people.

But…

That hatred… 

Naruto had only felt something similar twice before. One was Sasuke, who hated his brother with more passion than Naruto had ever felt anyone else hating anything. 

The second was the Kyuubi, whose chakra spoke of an inhuman hatred deeper than the ocean.

That emotion was the only thing that gave Naruto pause.

It would be a horrible thing to do, and Naruto didn’t actually believe his friend and mentor would be capable of it.

He was even willing to bet his life on that.

But he was not willing to bet the life of everyone in Konoha on that.

That realization tore him up inside. The fact that he couldn’t bring himself to fully trust Shinnō. He couldn’t bring himself to trust one of his closest friends.

What did that say about him?

* * *

Naruto leaned over the short table, his feet set in seiza position. 

Hesitatingly he reached for the correct string, then plucked it with infinite care. 

He listened as a clear note rang across the room.

“No, no! Stop, stop!” His teacher waved the tranquil atmosphere away. “You need to be more elegant! More  _ sure  _ of your motion. Back straight, eyes forward! Good. Now, again.”

Naruto took a deep breath, then executed his teacher’s instructions to the best of his ability.

The young man beside Naruto hummed and clicked his tongue in displeasure. It was an action he had learned to associate with passing his teacher’s standards, but only barely.

He continued with the melody, looking at an imaginary audience as he let his fingers fly.

His left leg began to tingle, inefficient blood circulation threatening to pop his projected body.

He shifted slightly to get in a better position, his massive kimono hiding his movement almost perfectly. _ Almost _ . 

“No!” His teacher shouted, interrupting the melody. “No movement! You are to be still as a mountain lake. Again!”

Naruto suppressed a sigh. 

His teacher may have been one of the best Koto players in the country, but the minor noble was also a pompous git that took his craft  _ way  _ too seriously while also requiring a small fortune just to give an hour of instruction a week. He wasn’t even a particularly good teacher. 

Naruto didn’t voice these complaints aloud however. Any one of them would have gotten him thrown out. 

Instead he sifted back in position, careful to keep his legs such that blood would be able to flow through them. 

Back straight. Eyes forward. Expression blank.

His fingers danced over the instrument below him. 

Music filled the air.

* * *

It happened on a friday night.

Hundreds of workers began setting up scaffolding and drapes to hide the Hokage Mountain. 

The proper papers were in their proper places, though even a shallow investigation would reveal that all the signatures were fake.

It would hold up to the next day at least, and that was all the time Naruto needed.

He had planned and practiced this for months. It had been almost two years since he did something similar, though the disrespectful smears he’d made back then would have left a bad taste in his mouth now.

This was something else however. He was ready. Hundreds of hours of practice had led to this point. He had all the paint he needed. He knew what he wanted to do. He was skilled enough to pull it off.

So he started painting. He didn’t let up all the way through the night, transformed clones distracting shinobi that came to ask what was going on and directed them to the ‘proper channels’.

When the sun first rose above the horizon and he finally removed the coverings, Konoha was greeted to a completely different monument.

The stone hadn’t been touched. Something like that wouldn’t have gone over well with anyone. But as any proper makeup artist could attest, true miracles can be achieved by color and contrast alone. Add a bit of ceramic coverings, and there was very little he couldn’t do.

On the left, the First Hokage was grinning widely. His eyes danced with joy and mirth as he looked across his village. Pride shone in every feature, and for a moment, Naruto could almost imagine the founder of the village was actually alive.

But no, it was the same stone statue, though redecorated to fit the stories he had heard about the man. As he knew two people that had actually met and talked with him, Naruto had ample opportunities to paint a picture of him in his mind.

The portraits in the Hokage’s office also helped immensely, though only in which colors to use. The portraits were just as serious as their statue counterparts.

Beside the Shodaime was the Second Hokage. Tobirama Senju was a much more serious man than his brother, and Naruto had depicted that by keeping his expression mostly as is. 

A small smile still stretched the corner of his mouth though, and he looked out over the village with the same pride as the statue on his left.

The current Hokage was next. 

Naruto had little trouble depicting that statue like its original, given how much time he’d spent with the man. 

The third Hokage was kind, and held to the Will of Fire stronger than anyone Naruto knew. He saw the village as his family, and so his statue reflected that. The statue also had brown hair, and showcased the strength of youth the Third Hokage had had when he’d first taken up the hat.

The rightermost face was Naruto’s father. With sunkissed blond hair and blue eyes, Minato looked very much like how a grown-up Naruto might one day look. 

A momentary flash of inspiration during the planning stages would have seen the Fourth frowning at the villagers for how they treated Naruto himself. 

But such a thing would have been petty, and only a handful would even have understood what he was going for.

Instead, Minato Namikaze looked at the village with a fiercely protective gaze. The Fourth Hokage was a man who had sacrificed his life, and his own son’s future to protect the village he loved.

Naruto could respect that. Even if he was the person most impacted by those choices. He didn’t like it, but his father’s choices was not something he would condemn.

* * *

_ Hiruzen Sarutobi _

The third Hokage awoke early in the morning. Just like he’d done every day for the last 9 years. 

It being Sunday meant it would be a slower day than usual, but the leader of the village was in no way free to skip as often as once a week. He did take a day off every month, - as he’d been ordered to by his doctor - but today was not that day.

As he left the Hokage’s residence (a house far too big for its single resident) an ANBU guard appeared before him.

Hiruzen instantly recognized him as Genma Shiranui. He had been one of Minato’s personal guards. They were his guards now, after two of the original team had died and the third had retired as an ANBU instructor.

“Hokage-sama.” Genma said. His voice wobbled slightly, as if he was uncertain how to voice his report.

Hiruzen relaxed. 

If he hadn’t been awoken during the night or interrupted during his morning routine, then this wasn’t an emergency. It was still possible the timing was pure coincidence, but as Genma seemed in no hurry to deliver his report, that unlikelihood became less and less probable.

“The Hokage Mountain… Naruto painted…” He managed to get out.

Hiruzen frowned. Naruto painted the Hokage Monument? It had been years since he’d last done that. Why would he start up again now?

The old Hokage bent his knees and jumped smoothly up to the roof of his house. His advanced age doing nothing to hinder him.

Turning towards the mountain. Hiruzen’s jaw dropped. His pipe clattered the stone tiles beneath him. 

He barely noticed.

The faces of the Monument were a work of art. Each one represented the Hokage in their prime. More emotion and skill had been put into each than any monument Hiruzen had seen since the fall of Rōran.

Memories crashed against him, threatening to drown him. Memories of his teacher and his brother. Memories of his own coronation and the pride he felt when Minato began leading the next generation into the future.

Memories of a bygone time. When he still had two sons and a wife, when the future seemed bright and filled with endless possibility.

A single tear trailed its way down his cheek.

* * *

_ Naruto _

The whole stunt with the Hokage Monument had gone over surprisingly well. 

Most shinobi didn’t seem to mind at least. There were some complaints of course, but he’d actually heard people proclaiming that they’d prefer the statues stay that way.

That wasn’t possible though. Tradition was an inertial force too powerful to be overcome so easily. Still, the Hokage had delayed for days until he ordered Naruto to clean everything up. 

He seemed quite sad to see it go too, and that alone convinced Naruto to repeat the trick. Maybe he should make it an annual thing?

* * *

Naruto felt the stale air blow against his face as he ran. The darkness around him was almost absolute. The only source of light was the seal he’d painted on his brow for exactly that purpose.

Stopping for a moment, the blond cocked his head to the side, listening for the running water.

It was still there - faint as always - but maybe it was a bit clearer than it had been last time?

It was difficult to tell for sure. Sound echoed off the stone around him and scattered in every direction. Trying to tell which way the sound came from was all but impossible.

His light swept over the walls, floor, and ceiling, looking for anything unusual.

He did notice a couple yellow mushrooms, which was moderately interesting until he identified the species and they became a known quantity.

He continued on. 

The caves beneath the Land of Rivers was not meant for humans. He’d often come across paths too steep for normal people to ascend, or drops as deep as hundreds of meters. Only his chakra enhanced body and Chakra Adhesion allowed him to traverse it as easily as he did.

Sometimes he’d stumble upon a blocked path where the weight of the stone above had become too much and the cave had collapsed. He stayed well clear of those areas, knowing the chances for further collapse increased exponentially there.

An hour of more searching and he finally found the running stream he’d been looking for.

The first place he found was barely a trickle, but by following the stream backwards, he managed to locate the main river.

The namesake of the country he was currently in, the stream of water was one of thousands running through this underground complex. Collectively they were responsible for carving up the country over millions of years and leaving the world’s largest ravines in their wake.

Thanks to these rivers, one half of the country was even more fertile than the Land of Fire, but the other part was a hilly death trap filled with endless landslides and collapsing ground, beneath which was an extensive cave network that nobody in their right mind ventured into.

Even shinobi were wary of getting lost in here. Without knowing which places had a ready supply of air or when the roof might collapse, it was a deadly vacation spot with virtually no upsides.

There had been a few expeditions, but they’d only scratched the surface of the natural labyrinth beneath this country. Who knew what secrets these caves may hide?

As Naruto crawled along the wet ground, feeling the rock press into his back. He began to feel the totally reasonable fear of having literal kilometers worth of rock above him.

He was alone down here. More alone than he’d ever been before. The only living beings with him were fish. In fact, there were so many of them that a few were flopping breathlessly on the riverbank, trying to return to their domain.

Drawing a kunai, Naruto stabbed one before it could escape.

Using the light from his seal, he tried his best to identify the animal.

It was no use. The Academy hadn’t gone over fish nearly as thoroughly as they had mushrooms, and he hadn’t done any self study on them beforehand. It could be a never before seen species or the most common vertebrate on the face of the planet. How would he know?

Sighing, Naruto took a bite and grimaced at the taste. Raw fish. Yuck.

Throwing the rest of it back into the river to be eaten by its kin, Naruto continued crawling along the ever-thinning river bank.

At one point, the roof became too low to continue. At that point, Naruto drew up his pant leg, showcasing the third seal he currently had on his body.

Sending a surge of chakra through the mark, another clone manifested itself behind him. Wordlessly, he reached his hand out behind him. Energy flowed into him as his doppleganger took it. They both stayed silent for the two minutes the process took to complete, the only sound being the sound of water and the occasional splash from the fish passing through it.

His next task was a chakra exercise Kakashi had taught him. It was technically a C-rank Water Release technique, but due to its function it was only really effective as a chakra exercise.

Said in another way; hand signs got in the way and continuous jutsu use required one to hold a seal indefinitely. So he’d had to master it until he could do it without seals, and sustain it even while doing other jutsu.

He wasn’t at full mastery yet, but he figured he was good enough for this. 

Once he was satisfied the chakra covering his face was correct, he rolled to the side and dropped into the river. 

The water rushed around him and tried to pull him backwards. Naruto resisted, his hands and feet finding purchase on the river bottom to keep himself from moving. Where they couldn’t find any, chakra stuck him to the slick rocks anyways.

Then he began dragging himself against the current. His chakra infused the water and changed it in front of his face, ripping oxygen atoms away from hydrogen ones and allowing him to breathe. 

Of course, breathing pure oxygen wasn’t good for you either. It could actually have permanent consequences to his brain and nerves, but that took at least half a day to truly become a problem. He also didn’t care for long term issues as he was now. After all, there wouldn’t be any. 

He doubted he’d stay underwater that long either way.

Fish slapped him in the face as he continued dragging himself forward. He wouldn’t dispel from such soft impacts so he ignored them.

This continued for hours, which was incredibly tiring, but at least it forced Naruto to get better at the water breathing exercise. He’d swallowed some mouthfulls here and there as his concentration lapsed, but he’d always managed to recover in time.

Coughing up water while trying to maintain a highly complex chakra exercise? Not easy. Naruto was proud he’d managed it.

There was one time he almost crashed into a fish bigger than him. The beast tried to eat him, and when that didn’t work, almost crushed him against the ground before Naruto managed to get away.

After 5 insanely exhausting hours, Naruto began to feel a tingling in his arms. That, and the aching in his lungs signaled the beginnings of oxygen poisoning.

Coupled with how cold it was, his hunger and thirst, muscle exhaustion, and running very low on chakra, Naruto couldn’t remember the last time he felt quite this miserable.

He was slowly realizing that he wouldn’t make it, that he’d dispel before his time - wasting hours and hours trawling through the murky contents of an underground river with very little to show for it.

The moment he thought that however, a space opened up above him. He  _ felt  _ it as it did, the water pressure lessening substantially and the power of the stream letting up to a cool current. Also, the faint light piercing the water from above was a good giveaway.

He emerged into a massive cavern. The water shone with its own light, bioluminescent algae dotted the surface of the water, and crystals in every color imaginable covered the cavern roof as glowing stalactites.

It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Naruto was all but certain he was the first human that had been here before. Maybe even the first human to have ever seen this sight.

Letting his exhausted body float atop the glowing water, Naruto grinned.

It was good to be alive.

* * *

Biting his thumb, Naruto watched with a detached fascination as the wound slowly healed itself before his eyes. The pain was nowhere near sufficient enough to dispel him, despite lesser wounds having easily done so when he first learned the Shadow Clone technique.

Then he slammed his palm against the ground. 

“Summoning!” He declared, focusing all he had on one specific toad. 

He’d only seen him once, so it wasn’t easy getting the jutsu to pick him out among the thousands of creatures bound to the Toad Summoning Contract.

But he finally managed it. After hours of trying, he’d finally managed to summon the one he wanted.

“Jiraiya-chan! I swear, if this isn’t an emergency I’ll have you eat dinner with us for a week!” The old toad raged.

The elder stopped once he noticed a distinct lack of Jiraiya. He looked around, finally locating his shorter than expected summoner.

His eyes widened. “Oh, Naruto-chan. Didn’t expect ya’ to summon me so soon. What do ya’ need?”

Naruto bowed politely. “Fukasaku-sama. I’m sorry to call you without any warning, but I didn’t know how to contact you beforehand.”

The ancient creature waved his concerns away. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t doing anything important.”

Naruto blinked confusedly. “But you just said…” 

A small dusting of red spread across the elder’s face. Something very strange to see on an amphibian. Naruto hadn’t known toads  _ could  _ blush.

“Nothing important! Nothing to concern yourself over, Naruto-chan!” He insisted, waving his arms in front of him.

Naruto decided to drop it. “Right. I was just wondering if you’d be willing to teach me.”

The bearded toad blinked up at him. “Teach ya’? Teach ya’ what?”

Naruto shrugged. “Anything really. Mainly I want to learn history from you, since you’re so… well…”

The tiny sage grinned. “Old?”

The child coughed. It was his turn to blush. “Yeah. But I’d be willing to learn anything else you deem important!” He nodded eagerly to show how enthusiastic he was. “I just want to learn as much stuff as possible. I figured you would be a pretty good teacher.”

Fukasaku blushed again, and Naruto could see him straighten in pride. “I see you’re a smart one Naruto-chan. You’ll make a much better summoner than your oaf of a godfather!” 

Nodding seriously, Fukasaku grinned at him. “Very well, I’ll be your teacher. History ya’ said? Well I’ve seen more history than your species remember! Ya’ made a good choice!”

The old toad croaked a happy croak, and the two of them got down to writing up schedules and lesson plans. 

It was a lengthy process, but Naruto was just happy that Fukasaku had agreed so readily.

As they worked, Naruto could see that the old sage animal was excited about the prospect. It seemed he liked teaching just as much as the Third Hokage. Thankfully, the old toad had much more free time than the leader of Konoha.

* * *

_ Naruto - Menma _

Menma braced himself as the full weight of two rice sacks settled upon his shoulders.

It was heavy, but not unbearable. Setting into a steady gait, he soon arrived at the cart where Ginjo was receiving them all. The father of two was tallying up every sack and meticulously weighing them before his son stacked at the back of the carriage. Minori, his daughter (and the youngest person traveling in the caravan), was writing up the numbers her father rattled off, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in a cutesy manner.

She looked up as Menma neared, beaming at him and giving him a small wave as a blush spread across her cheeks.

Menma nodded back, then did the same to the rest of the family, just to make sure he was acting appropriately. Clearly a pointless effort, as Ginjo was shaking with suppressed laughter as he looked at him. Tetsuya’s Trading Company wasn't really big on the whole ‘appropriate’ behavior thing.

Menma blushed, hunching his shoulders and turning back the way he came. In a flash of vertigo, he remembered that Mina was actually only a year younger than him. Or rather, a year younger than the biological age of his real body. 

As Menma, he’d gotten so used to thinking of himself as a teenager that his true age actually came as a bit of shock.

He shook himself. For some reason, that didn’t really make him feel any better. If anything, he only felt more inappropriate.

He didn’t  _ feel _ like a nine year old. In fact, he felt more like the 17 year old he was currently pretending to be. Then again, he knew the other him, - those  _ not  _ playing a role - didn’t really feel like any age in particular.

Such were his thoughts as he returned to the rice stock, his colleagues passing him by. They all carried a sack of their own. One had even tried for two like him, but the young man was barely making any headway and was clearly struggling beneath the weight.

Shaking himself out of his minor identity crisis, Menma sent him a grin and a thumbs up.

He received nothing but a glare in return.

When he arrived at his destination, he saw that Tetsuya had taken the last sack himself.

The old man was speaking to the farmer supplying them cordially, even giving a small bow before he left.

Menma fell in step beside his boss. The massive man didn’t seem too bothered by his burden, keeping the sack on his own shoulders despite Menma’s offer to take over.

“You were surprisingly polite back there. Usually you can’t be bothered to bow. Even to nobles.” The younger pointed out.

Tetsuya snorted. “Nobles rarely contribute to society, there’s nothing about them worth respecting. Farmers on the other hand… they are the foundation upon which all our lives rest. Their jobs are vital. If there is anyone that deserves respect, it’s them.”

Menma tilted his head to the side, contemplating that line. He supposed there was some logic to it, though not one he was used to considering. “What about traders then? Are we worth respecting?”

“Some. It depends on how they do business, and who they do it with. Our guild does good, but there are bastards out there that use their position to exploit others.” Tetsuya answered, cricking his neck as he delivered the last sack for Ginjo to tally up.

Menma gave another nod as Minori waved at him again, too shy to speak up but terribly pleased by the little attention he showed her.

He quickly followed his boss as they settled into the carriage at the front of the group, trying very hard not to think about his current conundrum. 

Soon the caravan was moving again, continuing on to the next warehouse on their route. The younger chose to walk for a little while, stroking one of the horses before giving her the carrot he had hidden away for exactly that purpose.

Tetsuya rolled his eyes at him. Menma stuck out his tongue in response.

“You say the nobles aren’t worth respecting? But what about the governors? The Daimyo? They are certainly doing important jobs.” Naruto pointed out.

“Aye. There are some nobles doing good, but those are the minority. Most of ‘em are just sitting on their arses and orderin’ everyone else around. Doesn’t help that governing is the worst job to be bad at.” The old man snorted and rolled his eyes. “I guess there are a few worth respecting, but most aren’t.”

Menma thought for a bit before he asked a question he’d been wondering for a while. “What about shinobi then? Are they worth respecting?”

Tetsuya was silent for a moment, looking at the road with a far-off look. “Shinobi are people made for war. War doesn’t create. It only destroys. I’m not saying shinobi can’t do good, but on the whole, I think the world would have been better off without them.” 

Menma didn’t have anything to say to that.

* * *

_ Naruto _

Naruto meditated in Konoha’s evening twilight.

Chakra flowed. Senses expanded and shared. Memories danced within him like a living thing, a broth of experience and knowledge that he both knew intimately and had never considered.

His entire body was surrounded by a weak golden glow. 

Yang Release, in its purest form.

In the effort of training it, he’d found his body healed faster when exposed to it. Not to a level a proper medical technique could manage, but enough that it was worth spending some time every day exposing himself to it.

It felt good too. It was like bathing in a hot spring, or drinking a cup of warm cocoa.

The last of his clones for today dispelled, and Naruto’s toes curled in pleasure. 

That had been a sleeping clone, and together with his current meditation, he felt really good. Much better than he usually felt at the end of a day.

Naruto opened his eyes, then closed them again with a grimace as he noticed the swarm of insects buzzing around him. How had he not noticed them previously? He had to have half the clearing’s critters sitting on him.

Changing the nature of his chakra, he created a burst of wind from his entire body.

His clothes flared outwards, a couple tears opening among some of the thinner fabric. Naruto didn’t care though, he’d managed to get himself free of the insects.

He shuddered. Had he really been  _ that  _ deep in meditation that he hadn’t noticed something like that? It hadn’t felt like it, but apparently so. He’d have to do this inside the next time.

He looked down at the ground, seeing a tiny bird righting itself from where it had crashed into the ground. It twittered in distress, looking back at him with a look Naruto could  _ swear  _ was betrayal.

Naruto frowned, patting his hair and noticing a spot that was much warmer than the rest of it.

The bird tried to fly away, but failed as it’s wing wouldn’t open properly.

Naruto winced. That was probably his fault, wasn’t it?

Holding out his hands, he began channeling yang chakra to them again.

The insects around him buzzed again, clearly attracted to the light, but Naruto just sent another burst of wind to push them away again.

The bird tilted his head, watching him as he closed in with cupped palms. 

Then, when he was close enough, it jumped onto his hands without hesitation, shaking itself as if the yang chakra was a bath.

Naruto felt a feeling of wonder overcome him as he studied the creature settling into its new resting place.

What was the saying? ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’? He didn’t think it was supposed to be quite this literal though.

Still feeling refreshed, Naruto called up a couple clones to test the phenomenon. They immediately began channeling yang-chakra to their arms and walking around the clearing, trying to gather other animals.

A few minutes had been met with… mixed success. Insects were drawn to them like a particularly flashy dash of honey. If that was due the light or the energy he wasn’t entirely sure. It was clear the animals were attracted as well. But among the few rodents and birds his clones had found, few were willing to come close enough to touch it. And even those scurried away at the first sign of movement from his comparatively massive body. 

The bird in his hand was apparently just very bold.

Something that had led to Naruto damaging its wing.

He still felt bad about that.

Resigned to bringing the avian with him, he was about to dismiss his clones when one of them called out. “Hey boss! Maybe this is a good time to test it?”

Naruto stilled.

Yes. On the surface, this was the perfect time.

But he didn’t  _ want  _ to test it.

What if he succeeded?

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Are you sure?”

The clones looked back at him with severe expressions, both knowing exactly how serious this was. They nodded.

Naruto suppressed a shudder.

Cutting off the flow of chakra to his fingers, he put the now sleeping bird back on his head, absentmindedly keeping it there with a flow of neutral chakra flowing over its legs.

“... right.”

Making the Ram hand seal, Naruto focused on the bond he had with his clones. 

Tracing mental fingers over the energy matrix still burning within him, he began to interact with it. Using senses and abilities he had barely begun to understand and harness, he pushed forward, trying to find the detail he was looking for.

There it was. The memory component. An active bond, taking a  _ miniscule  _ amount of chakra. The bond twisted into seemingly nowhere, but it felt sure and steadfast, so Naruto could only assume he was simply unable to detect its other tether.

This was the feature he’d exploited when he created the Memory Brand. He had barely understood what it was doing back then, but now?

That was his soul, wasn’t it?

The thing he couldn’t sense? That had to be his soul, right?

Naruto mentally shook himself. It wasn’t important right now.

Instead, he took a look at the bond of chakra within the Shadow Clone matrix still active inside him.

He saw it. He felt it. 

Then he  _ twisted  _ it.

None of his clones reacted.

“Feel any different?” He asked, just as nervous as before.

Both of them shook their heads.

“Who did you do it to?” The one on the right asked.

“... I’d rather not say.”

“Fair enough.”

Then he dispelled them.

One set of memories returned clearly, together with a feeling of dread he’d barely believed himself capable of.

Damn. And the clone hadn’t even batted an eyelid. Was his poker face  _ that  _ good?

The second set…

There was no second set.

It wasn’t there.

Or, that wasn’t quite true. It was the same effect as he got with the Mass Shadow Clone; a vague impression that  _ something  _ had happened, but he’d somehow missed it.

Naruto shuddered.

So  _ that  _ was why it was a kinjutsu.

It had never made much sense to him, how a technique that merely took an immense amount of chakra could be categorized as a forbidden technique.

Summoning a large enough Boss Summon would require  _ far  _ more chakra than a simple Mass Shadow Clone, but despite that, the Summoning Technique was not considered a kinjutsu.

But Mass Shadow Clones did more than just tire you out. It created hundreds (or thousands) of copies of yourself.

Then it killed them all once the jutsu was finished.

There was no memory return. The mind you sent out didn’t return to you. Every single one of them were doomed to a life measured in minutes - if they were lucky.

It was a technique Naruto could spam day in and day out. Creating thousands of himself and setting them to work on whatever he wanted to do would be easy with chakra stores like his. 

With that technique, he could probably build a city in a week, or topple the entire country under the weight of sheer numbers and attrition.

By using this method, he wouldn’t experience the memory backlash that had hobbled him so far, though neither would he get the benefit of their experience.

But each clone summoned in such a way had death hanging over them like an unseen spectre, ready to reap.

Yes, his soul still survived intact, but so what? Souls survived death too, then passed on to the Pure Lands. Loss of memory and experience was just half a step removed from death.

To live with that knowledge… Naruto couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t snap from something like that. 

His clones didn’t  _ have  _ to listen to him. They could - and did - whatever they wanted. It was just that all of them wanted the same thing as him, because they  _ were  _ him. 

With the memory transfer aspect, he’d come to think of his clones as extensions of himself. They were copied minds that would soon meld back into his. But that still meant they would just return whence they came, becoming one with him again. 

But with this, there was no such connection.

And he couldn’t guarantee that he would never use it either. The technique was simply too useful for that.

Sooner or later, he probably  _ would  _ call upon the Mass Shadow Clone. Though he’d better only use it for a cause he was willing to die for, because if not…

Naruto shuddered.

The bird on his head gave a peep of protest.

Naruto gave a weak smile, taking the bird into his hands again. It was a poor distraction, but it was the best he had right now.

The sparrow looked up at him, tilting its head in confusion.

“I think I’ll name you… Jack.”


End file.
